|
« AAUP Homepage
|
AAUP Protests Exclusion of Foreign Scholars
By Wendi Maloney
In February, AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen wrote to the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security about “a troubling pattern” in which foreign scholars are prevented from entering the United States because of their “perceived political beliefs or associations.” The most recent incident Bowen cited was the government’s delay in granting a visa to Waskar Ari, a Bolivian scholar appointed to a faculty position in history and ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The position was scheduled to begin in fall 2005.
Ari, who earned a PhD from Georgetown University in fall 2004, is an authority on religious beliefs and political activism among indigenous Bolivians; he is himself a member of the indigenous Aymara population of Bolivia. According to the American Historical Association (AHA), of which he is a member, Ari has been a consultant to the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank on problems facing the Aymara. He has also served as a visiting assistant professor at Western Michigan University and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas.
No explanation has been given about why Ari’s work visa remains “pending,” nor why his existing student visa was canceled, although a State Department spokesperson told the Chronicle of Higher Education in March that the student visa was canceled under a “terrorism-related section of U.S. legislation on the granting of visas.” The State Department responded to Bowen later in March, directing him to the Department of Homeland Security, which it says must approve “associated employment petitions” before visa applications proceed to the State Department for consideration.
The AHA reports that Ari is “widely recognized as a voice of moderation and as someone with no relationship to any sort of extremist group that might be construed as threatening to U.S. interests, no matter how broadly defined.” The AHA concludes that the government’s refusal to permit Ari to enter the United States relates solely to his indigenous identity and “appears to be a case of racial profiling.” Bolivia recently elected another Aymara, Evo Morales, as president. Morales, a leftist, has opposed U.S.-supported efforts to end cultivation of the coca plant, a main ingredient in cocaine.
The denial of Ari’s visa follows the government’s widely reported refusal in 2004 to grant a visa to Swiss citizen Tariq Ramadan, a respected scholar of the Muslim world, after he was appointed to a tenured faculty position at the University of Notre Dame. In January, the AAUP joined the American Civil Liberties Union, Ramadan himself, the American Academy of Religion, and the PEN American Center in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the provision of the USA Patriot Act used to bar Ramadan from this country. The provision applies to “aliens” who have used a “position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.” Ramadan has criticized actions of the U.S. government, but no evidence has been put forward suggesting that he supports terrorism.
Also in 2004, the State Department denied visas to all sixty-five Cuban scholars seeking to attend a conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) in Las Vegas. This past February, the State Department denied visas to additional Cuban scholars. It refused to permit fifty-five invited Cuban philosophers, economists, and historians to attend a March 2006 meeting of LASA in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Academic exchanges between Cuba and the United States have suffered in the two years since the government imposed new restrictions tightening an already existing embargo against Cuba.
“Taken together, these actions point to a disturbing disregard on the part of the Bush administration for our society’s commitment to academic freedom,” Bowen says.
|