Swedish Nobel body appoints new interim head

Swedish Nobel body appoints new interim head
Anders Olsson said he would take the role "on a temporary basis". Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT
The Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Literature Prize, appointed a new interim head on Friday as a sexual harassment scandal rocked the prestigious institution.
Two members, including permanent secretary Sara Danius, resigned on Thursday evening over a controversy that has divided the Academy into two camps.
   
The scandal centres on allegations by 18 women that they had been subject  to harassment and physical abuse by Jean-Claude Arnault, the French husband of  Academy member Katarina Frostenson. He denies the allegations.
   
Anders Olsson, a writer and professor of literature, said on SR radio that  he had been appointed to the post on a “temporary basis.”
   
Danius, the first women to head the Swedish Academy since its founding in  1786, said Thursday: “It is the Academy's wish that I leave my post as permanent secretary.” 
   
“I would have liked to have continued but there are other things to do in life.”
   
She said she was also leaving the Academy. Technically, the Academy's 18  members are appointed for life and cannot resign, but they can choose not to participate in the Academy's meetings and decisions.
   
Katarina Frostenson meanwhile also announced she would no longer take part  in the Academy's work.
   
The Swedish Academy, which had subsidised her husband's cultural club Forum in Stockholm for many years, cut all ties with his establishment — a key meeting point for the country's cultural elite — in November after the 
allegations emerged.
   
The Academy meanwhile is conducting an internal investigation into the  allegations amid fears that its global reputation and the standing of its Literature prize could be tarnished.
   
“This is devastating for the reputation of the Nobel prize,” Mattias Berg,  who covers cultural affairs for SR radio, told AFP.
   
“It seems the Nobel prize for literature, the most important prize for  literature in the world, is awarded by an Academy which shows nothing but a lack of judgement and integrity,” Berg said.
   
The Swedish Academy, which comes under the direct patronage of the Swedish  king, is traditionally very discreet, with its meetings and decisions normally  shrouded in secrecy. It has been deeply shaken by the scandal. 
   
The other Nobel prizes — for medicine, physics, chemistry, economics and  peace — are decided by other institutions in Sweden and Norway.

Member comments

Become a Member to leave a comment.Or login here.
https://www.thelocal.se/20180413/swedish-nobel-body-appoints-new-interim-head/
www.thelocal.se
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-31
93787
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:D4XCY6RCN7U6DZZGIZDANP75GI6KMAJG
<urn:uuid:261f16c0-ab59-4ed6-96a7-4e35d599e8ad>
2021-08-05T12:31:01Z
104.18.29.82
text/html
sha1:TVPMHQJEVVEB5CCOLKVQ63BXMDHPSYSJ
<urn:uuid:a5aa6c5d-7a53-4699-9def-15c1e4e788bb>
https://www.thelocal.se/20180413/swedish-nobel-body-appoints-new-interim-head/
response
<urn:uuid:d5010d1d-786c-4257-ae95-b876f5b5e285>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-31
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for July/August 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-216.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/