Kathy Wilkes

Kathleen Vaughan Wilkes (23 June 1946 – 21 August 2003) was an English philosopher and academic who played an important part in rebuilding the education systems of former Communist countries after 1990.

Her most notable contribution lay in her clandestine activities behind the Iron Curtain, which led to the establishment of underground universities and academic networks in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe.

Her paternal grandparents had founded and run St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, while her grandfather on her mother's side (the Very Rev Cyril Alington) had been Headmaster of Eton, Dean of Durham and author of many famous hymns.

Concerned at the lack of voice for philosophers in the east who were interested in the analytic approach, with Bill Newton-Smith as her co-editor, she created a journal known initially as the Dubrovnik Papers, and now flourishing as International Studies in the Philosophy of Science.

During the siege of Dubrovnik by the JNA in 1991–1992 during the Croatian war of independence, she refused to leave, seeing it her duty to give comfort and support to the sufferers and to inform the world of the city's distress.

Kathy Wilkes was specifically referenced by her colleague Roger Scruton who took her as his model of the English gentleman, arguing that "her virtues were revealed in nothing so much, as her habit of concealing them".