Gwendolyn Bradley: Scholars Excluded from the United States

(Courtesy of Swerve Left)

Scholars Excluded from the United States
By Gwendolyn Bradley
American Association of University Professors

In recent years, scores of foreign citizens have been barred from the United States when they sought to travel here to attend academic conferences, take up faculty posts, or perform other scholarly work. While the number of foreign scholars excluded is a relative handful compared to the number allowed to enter the country, it represents an alarming trend that is at odds with this nation’s historic commitment to the free exchange of ideas. Sometimes the exclusions have been for overtly ideological reasons—such as the blanket exclusion of Cuban scholars seeking to attend a conference of the Latin American Studies Association. In other instances, no reason has been given by the government, leaving observers to guess that the exclusions were related to the politics or ethnic identities of the scholars in question.

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