Legal Brief Against Trump's Travel Ban

Yesterday the AAUP joined with the American Council on Education and other higher education groups in an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court opposing Trump’s travel ban. The brief argues that people from the six countries identified in the ban should not be barred or deterred from entering the United States and contributing to our colleges and universities. 

As the brief notes, the ban has caused specific harm to higher education. From the moment the executive order containing the ban was signed, recruits were deterred from accepting faculty positions in the United States. Some scholars have pulled out of academic conferences here, either because they were directly affected by the ban or because they were concerned about its impact. In the brief, we emphasize the international exchange of scholarly work, and explain how the ban “jeopardizes the vital contributions made by foreign students, scholars, and faculty by telling the world in the starkest terms that American colleges and universities are no longer receptive to them.”

The amicus brief is part of the AAUP’s continued work to combat the chilling effects that the administration’s border policies are having on faculty and higher education. In conjunction with the Knight First Amendment Institute, we are also looking into legal issues related to a regulation that authorizes border patrol officers to search a traveler's electronic devices at the borders without any basis for suspicion. Learn more here.