The Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry, composed of more than 6000 teachers at nearly 200 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, has asked United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim and M.V. Keldysh, chairman of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, to intercede for emigration permission to Prof. Herman Branover of Riga and his wife and son.
Prof. Hans J. Morgenthau, the political scientist and Academic Committee chairman, wrote Waldheim and Keldysh on behalf of academicians “committed to the principle of detente and mutual understanding among nations of the world.” He said of Prof. Bran-over that “This distinguished physicist of Riga whose research work is known to the international academic community seeks only the right to emigrate to Israel.”
The 40-year-old physicist’s motivation, the appeal continued, “is simply his deeply held religious convictions,” and thus, “In furthering our common concern for peace and international cooperation we urgently ask you to intercede with the Soviet government on a strictly humanitarian basis to grant Prof. Branover, his wife and his son exit visas.” The Academic Committee reported that similar cables were sent to Keldysh by five professors at Princeton University, four physicists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; four physicists at Brown University and three engineering professors at Brown.
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