Jan Hus Educational Foundation

Jan Hus Educational Foundation

Former philosophy faculty building (1976–2012) at 10 Merton Street, Oxford
Founded	May 1980
Founder	Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford
Focus	Underground education network
Location	Czechoslovakia
Website	Jan Hus Educational Foundation

The Jan Hus Educational Foundation was founded in May 1980 by a group of British philosophers at the University of Oxford. The group operated an underground education network in the former Czechoslovakia, at the time under Communist Party rule, running seminars in philosophy, smuggling in books, and arranging for Western academics to give lectures.

The Foundation was deemed a "Centre of Ideological Subversion" by the Czech police, and several of the visiting philosophers, including Jacques Derrida, Roger Scruton and Anthony Kenny, were arrested or placed on the "Index of Undesirable Persons".

The foundation was created after Czech dissident philosopher Julius Tomin wrote in 1978 to four Western universities asking them to support philosophy seminars he was holding in his apartment in Prague. The seminars were known as bytové semináře ("home seminars"). Tomin called his discussion group "Jan Patočka University", after the Czech philosopher who died in 1977 after being interrogated by police.

The letter was sent during a period when correspondence from the Eastern Bloc was slow and uncertain; one commentator compared it to sending a message in a bottle. Only one letter is known to have arrived at its intended destination, the philosophy faculty at the University of Oxford, one year after it was sent. The letter was read out to the faculty by William Newton-Smith of Balliol during a meeting in January 1979; the final item on the agenda was "Letter from Czechoslovakian philosophers". Those present voted to offer financial support and to send two philosophers to address the seminars. The minutes noted:

It was agreed that the Chairman (J. L. Mackie) should send a letter of support to the Czechoslovakian philosophers. It was agreed to ask the Lit. Hum [Literae Humaniores] Board to make a grant to cover the cost of sending two members of the Philosophy Sub-Faculty to meet with the Czechoslovakian philosophers."