Academic refugees must be nurtured

Britain's hostility towards refugees and asylum seekers, exacerbated by government legislation, could damage scholarship, the president of the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics warned this week.

Sir Raymond Hoffenberg, former president of the Royal College of Physicians and of Wolfson College, Oxford, said: "It is difficult to imagine the implications for the UK and the world had Karl Popper and Max Perutz - two of the scholars we supported - been dealt with in the demeaning way envisaged by the current (asylum and immigration) legislation."