The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by the acronym CERN, plans to cease, on November 30, all collaboration with Russian scientists who maintain their affiliation with institutions of the Russian Federation, the magazine revealed. Nature. The member states of CERN, which is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, voted for this decision due to the invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022 and is still ongoing. Some deplore this exclusion, which risks penalizing Russian researchers who oppose their government’s policies, but who cannot express their disagreement under penalty of sanctions.
Between 400 and 500 Russian researchers are affected by this decision. Most of them work from Russia in one of the Russian institutions which, immediately after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, clearly stated that they were for this war and supported President Vladimir Putin. “Most of these researchers are not based at CERN [qui est situé à Genève, en Suisse]. So there won’t be lots of Russians flying home when the collaboration agreement between CERN and Russia expires. [le 30 novembre prochain]. There will be no expulsion strictly speaking, but the Russians who are in their institute in Russia will no longer be able to collaborate with CERN,” specifies Arnaud Marsollier, spokesperson for the Organization.
The latter also points out that the CERN council, which represents all member states, had first put in place numerous restrictions from the start of the invasion of Ukraine, on travel and the movement of equipment between Russia and the laboratory. “Then, as the war continued and the cooperation agreements between CERN and Russia expired – agreements which are renewed every five years – the question arose whether or not to continue the collaboration. The council ultimately decided not to renew it because of the context,” he explains.
“It is not people of Russian nationality who are in question, it is the institutional relationship between CERN and Russia: this only affects Russian institutes and laboratories. Russian researchers who work in a German, Japanese or Canadian laboratory, for example, can obviously continue their activities,” he adds.
“Russian institutes have long collaborated on parts of the experiments carried out at CERN [qui met à disposition des chercheurs du monde entier des accélérateurs de particules]. The community [du CERN] organized itself to find laboratories to accommodate some of these Russian physicists, or transferred the competence and responsibility [assumées par des Russes] to other laboratories in order to continue to operate these experiments,” continues Mr. Marsollier.
Additionally, Russian funding agencies and institutions contributed approximately 4.5% of the budget for experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which remains the world’s most powerful particle accelerator to this day. This contribution is now assumed by the other members of the collaboration.
“A moral dilemma”
The historian and sociologist Yves Gingras deplores this decision by CERN. He sees an analogy with the demands of demonstrators who camped on the campus of McGill University and who demanded that the institution cut all ties with Israel. “This decision [d’exclure les physiciens russes]is to make researchers responsible for a government decision that they probably do not approve of. In addition to being depressed by the fact that Russia is ruled by a dictator, they will be doubly depressed because the European institutions are abandoning them,” he says.
Mr. Marsollier argues that “CERN is an international organization that was created 70 years ago so that nations could do fundamental research together for peaceful purposes. And everything that is studied, invented, found at CERN is accessible to everyone for the benefit of humanity.”
The director of the Particle Physics Group of the Department of Physics at the University of Montreal, Jean-François Arguin, who carries out most of his research at CERN, understands that “statements of support for the invasion of Ukraine Russian institutes were unacceptable to the management of CERN, which was founded shortly after the Second World War in a truly peaceful spirit.”
“The values of peaceful and international collaboration are truly at the heart of CERN, which is why it has gradually separated itself from collaborations with Russia,” he underlines, before confirming that it is agree with this decision “which aims to preserve the peaceful mission of the institution”. But he admits “to having empathy for the researchers who will probably suffer. It really is a moral dilemma to which there is no clear answer.”
Like Yves Gingras, Mr. Arguin sees an analogy with the collaborations he has with physicists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. “My Israeli colleagues are completely against the actions of the Netanyahu government. One of my colleagues, Shikma Bressler, is even a leader of the movement against Netanyahu. It would be horrible to me if individuals like them were banned because of the actions of their government, when they are completely against [ce dernier] and that they have values completely in line with mine. »
CERN will nevertheless maintain its links with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), an international nuclear physics research center located in Dubna, Russia. Ukrainian researchers are outraged by such a decision. For Yves Gingras, “CERN engages in variable geometry politics”.
But Mr. Marsollier explains that the status of the JINR is different. “Although it is located in Russia, JINR is not a Russian institute, but rather an international organization bringing together several countries which was created in 1956 on the model of CERN by the Eastern Bloc countries. CERN and JINR are two very similar organizations, which do a very similar type of research and between which there have always been exchanges. The current collaborations between CERN and JINR have nothing to do with defense issues,” he emphasizes.