|
« AAUP Homepage
|
University Sues Government Over Scholar's Exclusion
By Wendi Maloney
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln filed a lawsuit in March against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to compel it to respond to a visa petition the university filed in 2005 on behalf of Bolivian scholar Waskar Ari. He needs a U.S. visa in order to assume the faculty position in history and ethnic studies to which UNL appointed him. The position was to have begun 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, as is Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president, who has opposed U.S. initiatives in Bolivia. Critics, noting that the Aymara are regarded by some conservatives as leftist and anti-American, have speculated that Ari’s identification with the group may be the reason the U.S. government has failed to act on his work visa and cancelled his existing student visa. The American Historical Association (AHA), however, 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, like the AAUP and other higher education and civil rights groups, has publicly protested Ari’s exclusion from the United States.
“The university was concerned that over a year and a half had passed with no action on our visa petition,” Peter S. Levitov, UNL’s associate dean for international affairs, told the Chronicle of Higher Education in March. “The university would like Mr. Ari to join our faculty and teach our students. This really is a measure of last resort to compel the government to make a decision.”
AAUP associate counsel Rachel Levinson notes that the Ari case is part of a larger, troubling pattern in which the government has denied admission to foreign scholars in an apparent reaction to their ideology or perceived opinions. After the University of Notre Dame awarded a tenured position to Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan in 2004, the government revoked his visa and stated explicitly that it did so because of Ramadan’s ideology, although it later retreated from that position. Other scholars, including Adam Habib of South Africa, John Milios of Greece, and Karim Meziane of Canada, have been denied entry into the United States as well. “We are left to guess that it is on the basis of misconceptions about their ideology and expressed views,” Levinson says. “In any case, these exclusions increasingly infringe on the First Amendment rights of Americans to hear and evaluate different views and on the academic freedom of scholars to travel freely and share information.”
|