Chile’s Victims

To the Editors:

May I use the hospitality of your pages to announce the formation of an International Social Science Committee for Chile. This committee was formed at a meeting in Santiago on September 15 of this year, and its convener is Professor Alain Touraine, the distinguished French sociologist who has had many years of association with Chile.

The committee has two main activities at present. The first is an effort to protect and encourage as best as possible those of our colleagues in the social sciences who remain in Chile. This can perhaps be done by the establishment or reinforcement of connections with Chilean institutions; the allocation of research funds from abroad to Chilean colleagues, and similar concrete demonstrations of solidarity with them.

There are, alas, other tasks. These include the financing of emigration from Chile for those obliged to leave the country and a search for suitable employment for these Chilean colleagues abroad.

Will those who can be of help in this matter please communicate directly with Professor Alain Touraine at the following address: Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Centre d’Etude des Mouvements Sociaux, 54, Boulevard Raspail, 75270 Paris Cedex 06, France.

Offers of assistance and financial contributions are equally welcome.

Norman Birnbaum

Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.