The U.S. State Department sent a letter to various academic and civil liberties groups pledging to promote a “marketplace of ideas” by addressing “ideological exclusion” in the granting of visas to foreign academics.
The letter, written by Harold Honju Koh, a legal adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, states that the department will give “significant and sympathetic weight” to those seeking to enter the U.S. to fulfill speaking engagements, attend conferences, accept teaching positions, “or for similar expressive or educational activities.”
Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, praised the State Department’s letter and the Obama administration’s commitment to “the global marketplace of ideas and to the free exchange of opinion and analysis among American scholars and visitors from abroad.”
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the State Department’s new stance on academic visas comes in response to the positive reaction of Secretary Clinton’s executive order allowing travel visas to be granted to Tariq Ramadan, a professor at the University of Oxford, and Adam Habib, a professor at the University of Johannesburg.
