Fighting for scientific rights

As several corrupt governments abroad have jailed and tortured their scientists for standing up to oppression, computer science professor emeritus Jack Minker has spent many evenings and weekends for more than 40 years working to bring these injustices to light.

For his efforts, Minker will receive the 2011 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights Scientists Award today in New York. The award recognizes scientists who play a role in protecting and advancing civil liberties for scientists on an international scale, and Minker is receiving the honor because of his four decades of writing countless human rights violations reports in some of the world's most oppressive societies, including the former Soviet Union, Argentina, Pakistan and South Africa.

"Jack was very active and very heroic," said physics professor emeritus Jay Dorfman. "[The Pagels Award] is very well deserved. Jack more than deserved it. His excitement and his dedication, not to mention his courage in making things happen, is so well admired."

Minker came to the university in 1967 as a computer science professor, and seven years later became the founding chairman of the computer science department. But his involvement with human rights was circumstantial.

In 1972, his late wife came home with a request from one of her friends who wanted to know whether Minker would serve as the vice chairman of the newly formed Committee of Concerned Scientists — an independent global organization advocating for the civil rights and scientific freedom of scientists.

"I thought it might be a long commitment; I thought it would be very time consuming; I didn't know how this would affect my research, but in the end I decided that was a poor excuse," he said. "I couldn't not do something that could potentially help save people's lives."

Minker agreed to assume the position and would later serve as vice chairman for the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights, part of the Association for Computer Machinery. Over the next two decades, he published four extensive reports detailing human rights violations in 13 different countries and included harrowing stories of injustices.

He wrote about a Chilean computer scientist who was abruptly taken out of his school, put in jail and tortured, and who only narrowly escaped execution. Eventually, the man fled the prison and the country, but the scars remain. Even though he returned to Chile years later, after it became a democracy, the man still fears to give out his name, Minker said.

Another story involved an Iranian computer scientist who was a member of the Baha'i religion. He was imprisoned and tortured for his beliefs, and he eventually escaped and left the country, according to Minker.

While many subjects of these reports were not targeted because of their jobs, but because of their opposition to their countries' government, he said his connections within the computer science field helped him rally support within the professional community.

"Scientists are like other people in dictatorial countries," Minker said. "The reason why I focus on computer scientists is because this is my area. People know me; people respect me; and when I say something and they tell me, ‘Why is this happening?' they believe me."

Minker brought this fight for human rights to the campus in the 1970s, organizing a visit from the wife of Natan Sharansky. Her husband was a Jewish computer scientist who was imprisoned for his religion in the Soviet Union, and about 200 people packed the auditorium in the physics building to hear her story, according to Dorfman, who aided Minker in the fight to help free Jewish scientists from the Soviet Union during the 1970s.

Minker — who still serves as vice chairman of the Committee of Concerned Scientists — said he will continue his work as a human rights activist airing injustices.

And for Minker, simply being a part of the fight for human rights is a greater honor than any official accolade could bring.

 "I've done a lot of good things in my research," Minker said. "But I believe this is the most important thing I have done in my life — to support this effort. This is the one that is the most satisfying."

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