Barbara Weinstein: In final column as AHA president, she decries limits on academic freedom in age of terrorism
... Three principal forms of state intrusion into academic affairs have diminished or threaten to diminish academic freedom for historians and other scholars. The first is the denial of visas to scholars from abroad; the second is the withdrawal of government records and other documentation from public and scholarly scrutiny; the third is the campaign spearheaded by David Horowitz to have state legislatures pass what Horowitz calls the "Academic Bill of Rights" (ABOR).
With regard to the visa issue, first the good news: after more than two years of anxiously waiting and wondering, Waskar Ari Chachaki finally received a visa from the U.S. Consulate in La Paz, Bolivia, which enabled him to join his admirably steadfast colleagues in the Department of History at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL). But while this particular story has a happy ending, there are still many other scholars who anxiously await their visas somewhere outside the United States, and others who have been denied a visa and cannot enter at all, even for a brief symposium. Indeed, just days after hearing the welcome news about Waskar Ari, the AHA received word of another historian who had been told that her visa would be delayed for an indeterminate amount of time under similarly bewildering circumstances.
Moreover, even if all the scholars who have experienced a visa delay or denial in recent years suddenly found themselves in possession of a passport with the appropriate stamps, the damage would have been done. As Waskar Ari succinctly put it in remarks addressed to faculty and students at UNL soon after his arrival, he used to think of himself as a "transnational scholar," someone who circulated freely in the world of ideas, and for whom the scholarly community transcended any specific national location. Now he feels like a "foreign scholar," someone who must carefully consider where he can go and what he can do. Who knows how many other one-time "transnational scholars" now feel like foreigners or aliens who have no rights, even to an explanation for why they have been or are being excluded....
Read entire article at Barbara Weinstein in the AHA Perspectives
With regard to the visa issue, first the good news: after more than two years of anxiously waiting and wondering, Waskar Ari Chachaki finally received a visa from the U.S. Consulate in La Paz, Bolivia, which enabled him to join his admirably steadfast colleagues in the Department of History at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL). But while this particular story has a happy ending, there are still many other scholars who anxiously await their visas somewhere outside the United States, and others who have been denied a visa and cannot enter at all, even for a brief symposium. Indeed, just days after hearing the welcome news about Waskar Ari, the AHA received word of another historian who had been told that her visa would be delayed for an indeterminate amount of time under similarly bewildering circumstances.
Moreover, even if all the scholars who have experienced a visa delay or denial in recent years suddenly found themselves in possession of a passport with the appropriate stamps, the damage would have been done. As Waskar Ari succinctly put it in remarks addressed to faculty and students at UNL soon after his arrival, he used to think of himself as a "transnational scholar," someone who circulated freely in the world of ideas, and for whom the scholarly community transcended any specific national location. Now he feels like a "foreign scholar," someone who must carefully consider where he can go and what he can do. Who knows how many other one-time "transnational scholars" now feel like foreigners or aliens who have no rights, even to an explanation for why they have been or are being excluded....