June 20, 2006
The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
Department of State
2201 C Street
Washington, DC 20520
The Honorable Michael Chertoff
Secretary of Homeland Security
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20280
Dear Secretary Rice and Secretary Chertoff:
We write again to express our strong concern with the decision of the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security to bar a foreign scholar from entering this country to participate in an academic conference. On June 8, Professor John Milios, a faculty member at the National Technical University of Athens who was to present a paper at a conference on “How Class Works” at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, was denied entry into the United States upon his arrival at JFK international airport because of purported irregularities in his visa. The visa was issued in 1996 and was set to expire on November 6, 2006. Since 1996 and prior to June 8, he had been allowed entry into the country on five separate occasions to participate in academic meetings, including a meeting in February 2003 of the Eastern Economic Association. He reports that he was questioned at the airport by US officials about his political ideas and his political affiliations, and he reports further that upon his return to Greece the American consul in Athens also queried him about the same subjects. Professor Milios is active in Greek national politics, is a member of the Syriza party (Coalition of the Radical Left), and has twice been a candidate for the Greek parliament.
In our letter to you of February 28 (a copy is enclosed for your convenience) with respect to the case of Professor Waskar Ari, we wrote that our concern about that case was “deepened because it appears to be another instance of the government’s barring entry of a scholar who wishes to visit this country for legitimate academic reasons.” The government’s barring entry of Professor Milios is one more instance, so the available information indicates, of the administration’s seeming disregard for our society’s commitment to academic freedom. As you both are aware, and as Secretary Rice well knows from her experience as a professor and administrator at Stanford University, opportunities for the free exchange of ideas among scholars are essential to the search for knowledge. Preventing these exchanges because of objections to the political activities or associations of participating scholars is at odds with this fundamental purpose.
We would welcome hearing directly from you about this important matter.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Knight
Director, Program in Academic Freedom and Tenure