Three Nobel Prize academics resign

They announced their resignation in protest at divisions within the Nobel Prize Academy of Literature since #metoo's revelations that splashed it.

_{Source: Peter Englund of the Royal Swedish Academy, announcing the nomination of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2013 to the Canadian writer Alice Munro. He resigned on April 5, 2018 with two other academicians.}

The three men are perpetual members of the academy and cannot in principle resign. But nothing forces them to sit there.

The scandal revealed in November the close relationship between the academy and "a personality of the world of culture" accused of rape and sexual assault by academicians, wives of academicians, their daughters, and many other women.

Married to an academician, the man at the heart of the scandal directs in Stockholm a place of exhibition and performance run by cultural elites and partly funded by the academy, which organizes readings of the laureates.

The academy opened an internal investigation and enlisted the services of a lawyer. Their conclusions are not known - the academicians are bound to a strict duty of reserve - but according to Peter Englund, one of the three resigning, the case has deeply divided.

"Over time, a crack has appeared that continues to grow," he said in a letter to the newspaper Aftonbladet. According to him, perpetual secretary Sara Danius, who succeeded him in 2015, is the subject of "unwarranted" internal criticism.

_{Source: Swedish Academy Permanent Secretary Sara Danius announces that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature 2016 at a press conference at the Old Stockholm Stock Exchange Building in Stockholm, Sweden on October 13, 2016.}

Peter Englund (chair number 10), Klas Östergren (chair number 11) and Kjell Espmark (chair number 16) made their decision known to their peers at the traditional meeting of the academy Thursday in a restaurant in Stockholm.

"It is with great sadness that after 36 years working at the academy, including 17 as Nobel Committee Chairman, I find myself forced to make this decision," Kjell Espmark said in a letter to the press .

"When leading members of the academy place friendship ahead of accountability and integrity, I can not participate in its work," he added.

Klas Östergren denounced "a betrayal of the founder (of the academy, King Gustav III in 1786, ed) and his great protector", the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who bequeathed to the institution part of his fortune .

For Björn Wiman, head of the cultural pages of the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, these ads are "a disaster" for the academy "in ruins".

On the judicial front, the Stockholm public prosecutor's office announced in mid-March that part of the investigation against the man at the heart of the scandal had been dismissed for want of prescription or lack of evidence. These are rapes and alleged assaults in 2013 and 2015.