Mathematicians Express Solidarity with Jewish Colleagues in USSR

–Solidarity with Jewish mathematicians in the Soviet Union was expressed by delegates attending the International Congress of Mathematicians recently held at the University of British Columbia. Hundreds of the more than 5500 delegates attending the conference, who also represent 150 major universities and institutions around the world, signed a petition addressed to Communist Party Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev deploring the harassment and dismissal from their professional posts of Jewish mathematicians who applied to emigrate to Israel. During the course of the nine-day congress, members of the Vancouver Soviet Jewry Committee met with recent emigrants now working at universities in Israel and also handed letters of protest to members of the Soviet delegation.