Committee of Concerned Scientists

The Committee of Concerned Scientists (CCS) is an independent international organization devoted to the protection and advancement of human rights and scientific freedom of scientists, physicians, engineers, and scholars.

History The Committee was formed in 1972 in Washington and New York as an ad hoc group of scientists and scholars concerned about violations of academic freedom and the persecution of scientists around the world.Gerhard Sonnert and Gerald James Holton. Ivory Bridges: Connecting Science and Society. MIT Press. March 2002. ; page 144. (Sometimes, the creation of the Committee is dated to 1973.Linda L. Lubrano. The political web of scientific cooperation between U.S.A. and USSR. In: Sectors of Mutual Benefit in U.S.-Soviet Relations. Nish Jamgotch (Editor). Duke University Press. April 1985. ; page 60.)

Most of the activities of the Committee in the 1970s and 1980s were aimed to help refuseniks and dissident scholars in the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries.Soviet Union nondelivery of international mail : hearings before the Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, House of Representatives, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, on H. Con. Res. 58, July 2, 1979. U.S. Govt. Print. Off., Washington, 1979; pages 41-42.CCS Letter to Marshall W. Nirenberg, June 29, 1983. The Marshall W. Nirenberg Papers. Profiles in Science. National Library of Medicine. Accessed June 28, 2008.

The Committee lobbied both the Soviet and Western governments on behalf of these oppressed scholars, provided moral and financial support to them, and organized conferences and meetings of refuseniks, including in the Soviet Union itself. Sometimes, the Committee of Concerned Scientists is credited with having coined the actual term "refusenik".Leo Calvin Rosten. The Joys of Yinglish. McGraw-Hill, 1989. ; page 431. The Committee played an active role in helping such Soviet dissidents as Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky, Yuri Orlov, Benjamin Levich, and others.Gerhard Sonnert and Gerald James Holton. Ivory Bridges: Connecting Science and Society. MIT Press March 2002. ; page 144. From 1978 to 2003, CCS worked in close collaboration with the New York Academy of Sciences which published the proceedings of several refusnik conferences."The Committee of Concerned Scientists Records, 1970-2006 (Bulk dates: 1974-2005) HR# 0004." https://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/inside/projects/findingaids/scans/pdfs/Committee_Concerned_Scientists.pdf

Subsequently, CCS expanded its activities to pursue human rights and academic freedom issues in other countries.

For example, CCS lobbied both the Chinese and the U.S. governments on behalf of the Chinese astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, who supported dissident students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.Kirsty Sucato. Q&A; An Advocate for Oppressed Scientists. The New York Times, March 14, 1999. After his immigration to the U.S., Fang Lizhi served on the CCS himself.Hilary Poole (Editor). Human rights: the essential reference. Greenwood Publishing Group. June 1999. ; page 189. In 2019, CCS made the case to Donald Trump, then U.S. president, to end a described campaign to intimidate U.S. scientists of Chinese ethnicity. Much of the focus of CCS in China has been on the situation of political prisoners and of minority scholars and teachers, including those of Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongolian ethnicity. For example, CCS wrote about the case of ethnic Mongolian dissident and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Hada. CCS has written about the case of Wang Bingzhang, former surgeon and researcher, and of Yang Hengjun, Australian-Chinese novelist and academic, both accused of espionage as well as Xu Zhiyong, and Huang Qi, who were accused of subversion. In regards to Uyghurs, CCS has advocated on behalf of scholars such as Ilham Tohti, Rahile Dawut,, Tashpolat Tiyip,, Abduweli Ayup, and Abdulqadir Jalaleddin. Additionally CCS has advocated on behalf of academics in Hong Kong such as Benny tai Yiu-ting and Shiu Ka-chun.

In 2001, the CCS lobbied the Russian government and the Russian President Vladimir Putin in support of the Russian scientist Igor Sutyagin, who was accused by the FSB (the successor agency to the KGB) of treason and espionage.Joint Letter to President Vladimir Putin. American Physical Society. Accessed June 28, 2008

In 2016, CCS made an appeal to then-Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to reopen the case of Boris Weisfeiler, a mathematician who disappeared in Chile in 1985.

The CCS has addressed alleged violations of the human rights of scholars in the following countries: Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Mongolia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Spain, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

Activities The Committee issues an annual report about cases of abuse of academic freedom and human rights of scientists and scholars around the world.Annual Reports of the Committee of Concerned Scientists. Committee of the Concerned Scientists. Accessed October 11, 2012

Members Prominent scientists who served as CCS board members include a substantial number of Nobel Prize winners, such as Paul Flory,William S. Johnson, Walter H. Stockmayer and Henry Taube. John Paul Flory. In: Biographical Memoirs. vol. 82. National Academy of Sciences, National Academies Press. 2003; ; page 131 Gerhard Herzberg,Henry H. Mantsch, . Journal of Molecular Structure. Volumes 834-836, May 27, 2007; pages 2-6. David Baltimore, Owen Chamberlain, Jerome Karle, Walter Kohn, Marshall Warren Nirenberg, John Charles Polanyi, Charles Hard Townes, Steven Weinberg, Rosalyn Sussman Yalow,Committee of Concerned Scientists Leadership list. Committee of Concerned Scientists. Accessed October 11, 2012. and others.Raymond L. Gathoff. Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. 1994. ; page 673.

Mathematical physicist Joel Lebowitz has been the long-term co-chair of the CCS, alongside the other three current co-chairs: physicist Eugene Chudnovsky, psychiatrist Walter Reich, and chemist Alexander Greer.

Mark Mellman was the first executive director of CCS"Mark Mellman, 70, Dies; Helped Democrats Understand Their Voters." 21 November 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/us/politics/mark-mellman-dead.html. He was followed by Dorothy Hirsch, Maude Kozodoy, and Sarah Penso. Sophie Cook, a retired government lawyer and mediator, served as executive director from 2008 to 2015. Carol Susan Valoris filled the role from 2015 to 2021. Suzanne Garment followed in 2021 to 2022, with Valoris returning from retirement in 2022 after Garment needed to step down for personal reasons. She was succeeded by Alexandra Bender from 2023 to 2025. The current executive director is Edyta Greer.

Committee of Concerned Scientists

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