Petition to Fabiola Gianotti, Director General CERN, Geneva
Professor Alessandro Strumia, CERN, spoke on Friday 28th September 2018 at a workshop in Geneva on gender and high energy physics. In his presentation he provided evidence for employment policies in physics that were discriminatory toward men and data supporting his opinion that women were given advantages in the academic world purely on the basis of their gender.
As a result, Professor Strumia was suspended with immediate effect by CERN on the grounds that his remarks were antithetical to its code of conduct and to its values.
There can be no free research and freedom of expression if any person must live in fear of existential threat simply for expressing his or her opinion.
Quite independently of the truth of Professor Sturmia‘s statements, none of them can be construed as defamatory, insulting or discriminatory. The opinion he expresses has been expressed many times in multiple research papers and by many other men and women of professional standing.
We cannot and will not tolerate opinions being censored simply because they are in contradiction with mainstream opinion. To do so would be to encourage a totalitarian trend our democracy should not allow.
We, the undersigned, request and demand the immediate and unconditional reinstatement of Professor Alessandro Strumia.
We have now closed the petition and forwarded the petition and the list of 2370 signatories from 90 countries to the director general of CERN. We received no response.
