Local News in Brief : USC Aids Sixth Refusenik
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USC has helped secure the release of a sixth Soviet refusenik .
Plant geneticist Valery Soyfer has been permitted to leave the Soviet Union and is expected to begin teaching at Ohio State University later this month, officials said Thursday.
Soyfer was director of the Soviet Institute of Applied Molecular Biology and Genetics and chief of the institute’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology before applying to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1979.
He is the sixth Soviet scholar to be permitted to leave the Soviet Union for teaching posts in the United States under a special University of Southern California program begun in 1982.
William Spitzer, dean of USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, told a news conference that the university was “very enthusiastic about the release of yet another distinguished scientist.”
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