U.S. Academicians Mull Boycotting Conferences to Fight Trump’s Travel Ban
Right after taking his oath as the president on the United States, Donald Trump issued an order which banned the citizens of seven Muslim countries from entering America. Although it was protested by various organizations in their very own ways, the academicians of U.S. decided that it needed to do more than just a hashtag battle on Twitter. As a reaction to this decision of Trump, some of the academicians have decided not to attend any academic conferences which are being organized in U.S. or boycotting them.
Thousands of Scholars Protest against Trump’s Travel Ban by Boycotting Academic Conferences
An online petition has been drawn which states that those who sign the petition are hereby taking action, in solidarity, against the decision of Trump to bar their Muslim colleague by pledging not to attend any of the international academic conferences that are being hosted in U.S. while the ban is still in action. It also states that banning their Muslim counterparts is questionable on the intellectual integrity of these institutes. This petition has been circulated around the world and is being signed by hundreds of academics.
The academics boycotting conferences has been quite a recent issue which first came into limelight with the proposal of boycotting the Israeli institutions in light of the country’s treatment towards Palestinians. Some of the other academic boycotts worth mentioning are the ones related to the labor dispute in the host hostels and the states r countries which had enforced controversial laws. However, it has been seen in multiple cases that the academicians find it quite difficult to reach an anonymous decision when it comes to political stand taking.
One of the petition signers, Max Weiss, who is also an associate professor of Near Eastern studies and history at Princeton University, stated in an interview that the academicians have very few resources with which they can protest against a government ruling and boycotting conferences is one of them.
As stated by Emery Berger, who teaches information and computer sciences at the University of Massachusetts stated that there have been discussions on the relocation or banning of various conferences that are to be hosted by United States. Berger is also a part of the Association for Computing Machinery who themselves host multiple international conferences around the year. He says that the association has been brainstorming on ideas which would diminish the effect of the travel ban. He is also of the opinion that other associations are also undertaking similar actions. “Science is intended to be free and open, and any place that restricts the travel of scientists to present their work is a problem,” said Mr. Berger, also stating that, “We are talking about taking steps to mitigate this problem however we can.”
Mr. Berger also stated that he has heard many academicians who are thinking of completely banning all kinds of conferences in the United States or relocating them elsewhere until the travel ban is withdrawn. But this seems to be a problem too as some of the professors of the American institutes belong to those seven countries and they are afraid that if they leave the country to attend conferences elsewhere, they may not be allowed to enter the country again. Another idea that has been circulating amongst the academician is the utilization of video conferencing technology to include colleagues who have been barred from entering the country due to the travel ban imposed by Trump.
However, the effect of the actions is yet to be seen.
