Paul Ram FLATHER
In Brief
Paul 's many past achievements include his work with dissidents in East Central Europe giving underground lectures and talks during the 1980s, as a member of the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, ultimately leading to arrest and expulsion in 1986, recognised by former President Havel with a letter of commendation and more recently including his additional higher education work with the CEU and Charles University with the Jan Masaryk Silver Medal from the Czech Government (2019)); extending and defending support to London's then five polytechnics, 18 adult institutes and some 4,000 youth projects clubs in Inner London during the1980s, including widening discretionary awards schemes to new groups especially in the East End, (for example foundation courses aimed at Bangladeshi women) as the elected Chair of the FHE Subcommittee; a scheme run from his kitchen table Project Prague to send 100 teachers to ECE schools in the wake of the 1989- 90 revolution, reported in full in the Daily Mirror, then working for the Open Society Fund, with several Soros Foundations, and then as first founding head of the Central European University (1990-4), before taking over as director for External Relations at Oxford University, as head of international work, alumni work building relations with donor groups all over the world, media work, publications, outreach in the community, all university events, supporting donor relations, and Government relations especially during efforts to mitigate reductions in funding for Oxbridge, and creating and running many scholarship schemes, including the Soros Hospitality Scheme, the Jenkins Scheme which he helped found after the death of Roy, as Oxford Chancellor, with whom he worked closely on University alumni relations and in building up the Europaeum network under the persona aegis of Lord (George) Weidenfeld and Sir Ronnie Grierson, of leading European universities as its first Secretary-General, establishing its corpus of work through joint summer schools, workshops, lectures, bursaries and other academic links, taking it from three founder members up to 15 members over more than 20 years involvement; working with the Round Table commonwealth journal and its awards, and recently as Chair of the Oxford Adam von Trott memorial committee, helping to extend its work to new bursary awards
and graduate workshops; and most recently serving as President of the Forum for Philosophy, which has been based at the LSE for its first 25 years, and now acting Chair; and above all, perhaps, as Chair since 2000 of the Vicky Noon Educational Foundation which has supported some 250 top Pakistani scholars to study at Oxbridge Colleges, a hugely successful programme, which has involved spending some £3m plus of VNEF funding but leveraging almost £7m.