[lit-ideas] Tariq Ramadan barred from teaching post in the US
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 16:33:33 -0700 (PDT)
Read Tariq Ramadan's own comments here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1293952,00.html
American Association of University Professors
August 30, 2004
Professors Protest Barring of Muslim Scholar from
Notre Dame Teaching
Post
Washington, D.C. - The American Association of
University Professors
today protested the United States government's action
to revoke the
work
visa of Professor Tariq Ramadan, a citizen of
Switzerland and
well-known
Muslim scholar who had been appointed to a faculty
position at the
University of Notre Dame beginning this fall. The
State Department's
action, apparently taken pursuant to a request by the
Department of
Homeland Security, bars the professor from entering
the country.
Although the professor had previously visited this
country without
hindrance or incident, his work visa apparently was
revoked because of
his political beliefs and the content of his writings.
A spokesperson
for the Department of Homeland Security said that
Professor Ramadan was
considered a person of "prominence" who had endorsed
or espoused
terrorist activity, and the State Department cited a
statute banning
persons who the government "knows, or has reasonable
ground to believe,
... is likely to engage in ... any terrorist
activity."
Robert O'Neil, chair of the Association's Special
Committee on Academic
Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis,
registered the
Association's protest in a letter to Secretary of
State Colin Powell
and
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. "Foreign
scholars offered
appointments at an American institution of higher
learning should not
be
barred by our government from entering the United
States because of
their political beliefs or associations or writings,"
O'Neil said. Such
actions, he continued, are "manifestly at odds with
our society's
respect for academic freedom."
The Association urged the Department of State and the
Department of
Homeland Security to reconsider their position and to
remove the
barrier
to Professor Ramadan's taking up his faculty
appointment at the
University of Notre Dame.
Robert O'Neil is the founding director of the Thomas
Jefferson Center
for the Protection of Free Expression at the
University of Virginia,
where he serves on the law faculty and is past
president of the
University. A nationally recognized authority on free
speech and
academic freedom, O'Neill has authored several books
and numerous
articles on these and related topics.
For further information, please contact Jonathan
Knight. His e-mail
address, jknight, can be reached at @aaup.org
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