The Art of Resistance: Defending Academic Freedom since 1933 | Page 12
forty years as Assistant Secretary and then Secretary, offered
this to thousands of refugee scholars. In Lord Ashby’s words, she
offered ‘immediate and evident empathy toward each individual
refugee’.
By the end of WWII, over 2,600 scholars from the heartlands
of Europe had been assisted. However, the Society’s battle for
academic freedom and assistance to refugee scholars did not end
in May 1945. Contrary to expectation, a new era of oppression
dawned during the Cold War. Civil war in Greece, the expansion
of Soviet control in Eastern Europe and the Russian invasion of
Hungary in 1956, all sparked fresh waves of those forced into exile.
In the 1960s, academic refugees from beyond the bounds
of Europe came to the UK in increasing numbers. Many young,
anti-apartheid activists escaping persecution in South Africa
did not have the same academic