Release date: 1/25/06
Read the complaint (.pdf )
Washington, D.C.—The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) today joined two other national organizations and Professor Tariq Ramadan in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU challenging the constitutionality of a key provision of the Patriot Act, which has been used to bar Professor Ramadan from this country. The AAUP and its co-plaintiffs, the American Academy of Religion and PEN American Center, each seek to bring Professor Ramadan to the U.S. to meet with organization members.
Professor Ramadan, a Swiss national, is a widely respected scholar of the Muslim world. Until recently, he visited the U.S. frequently to lecture, attend conferences, and meet with other scholars. In January 2004, Professor Ramadan was offered a tenured position at the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Just a few weeks before the beginning of the fall semester, as Professor Ramadan prepared to move his family to Indiana, the U.S. government revoked his visa.
Neither the professor nor the university received an explanation for this action, but a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security told the press that the visa was revoked “because of a section in federal law that applies to aliens who have used a ‘position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.’” This language appears in section 411 of the Patriot Act, and is known as the “ideological exclusion” provision.
The plaintiffs argue that the ideological exclusion provision violates their own First Amendment rights to hear a full range of ideas. Several broad and vague terms in the statute effectively allow the current administration to use the provision to exclude individuals whose political views it disfavors. The provision damages the vitality and limits the freedom of academic discourse in this country. The plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that the ideological exclusion provision is unconstitutional on its face, and as it has been applied to Professor Ramadan, an outspoken opponent of terrorist activities. The plaintiffs also seek an injunction to prevent the government from relying on this section to exclude any other foreign national.
“Fearing another’s ideas enough to prohibit their expression is perplexing to scholars and troubling to citizens,” Roger Bowen, general secretary of the AAUP, said. “The freedom to teach and the freedom to learn are protected freedoms in this nation and the AAUP and its co-plaintiffs must insist that these two freedoms be respected. Now is the time when we should be listening to and learning from Muslim scholars, not trying to silence them,” he added.
The AAUP has affirmed many times that the free circulation of scholars is an integral part of academic and intellectual freedom, and that the unfettered search for knowledge is indispensable for the strengthening of a free and orderly world. The AAUP’s work to promote academic freedom has included constant attention to the global implications of these principles. The AAUP routinely invites foreign scholars to lecture, attend conferences, and meet with U.S. academics. The AAUP has intervened on behalf of scholars who are oppressed in other countries, or who are unfairly denied visas to visit this country.
The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit charitable and educational organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic due process, and standards of quality in higher education. The AAUP has about 45,000 members at colleges and universities throughout the United States.