[Ppnews] Academia feels shadow of government

[Political Prisoner News]

Posted on Thu, Apr. 06, 2006


Academia feels shadow of government

BY VINCENT J. SCHODOLSKI
Chicago Tribune

LOS ANGELES - On March 10, Latin American history professor Miguel 
Tinker-Salas was sitting in his office at Pomona College expecting 
students during his regular office hours.

Instead, two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies walked in and 
started questioning the Venezuelan-born professor.

"The main focus of their questioning had to do with the Venezuelan 
community in (Southern California) and their desire to develop a 
profile of this community," Tinker-Salas said in an interview.

The deputies were gathering information for an FBI-led terrorism task 
force, something that unnerved Tinker-Salas and later the president 
of Pomona College, David Oxtoby, who circulated a concerned e-mail to 
faculty, students and alumni.

The concern centered on the chilling effect such visits could have on 
the spirit of openness and academic freedom at the college, near Los 
Angeles in Claremont, Calif. Similar concerns were expressed during 
the debate surrounding congressional renewal of the USA Patriot Act.

Moreover, the American Civil Liberties Union has raised broader 
questions about the Bush administration's denials of visas to foreign 
scholars and others in what some see as a political effort to bar 
dissident voices from the country.

The ACLU has filed two related lawsuits: In one, the group is 
pressing the administration to turn over documents that could shed 
light on why certain individuals were denied entry into the United 
States; in a second, the ACLU challenges aspects of the Patriot Act, 
arguing that ideological considerations and not terrorist concerns 
are being used to keep certain academics out of the country.

"We think that there is increasing evidence that the government is 
using the law to manipulate the flow of information into this 
country," said Jameel Jaffer, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "The 
way the government is using the law is to exclude people who have 
disagreed with U.S. policy."

The second ACLU lawsuit seeking to change aspects of the Patriot Act 
also names Tariq Ramadan as the symbolic plaintiff. Ramadan, a Swiss 
national barred by the U.S. government from entering the country, was 
set to take a position at the University of Notre Dame.

A number of cases have raised concerns across the nation:

_ Bolivian historian Waskar Ari, hired recently to teach at the 
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been denied a visa to enter the U.S.

_ Last month a group of 59 Cuban scholars was refused entry to Puerto 
Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, to attend an academic conference.

_ Dora Maria Tellez, a leading member of the Sandinista Liberation 
Movement in Nicaragua who is now a college professor, was denied 
permission to enter the U.S. to teach at Harvard University.

Maura Harty, an assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of 
Consular Affairs, said that the vast majority of visas for students 
and professors are processed efficiently and the visas are issued.

She said she regretted any unwarranted delays but noted that the 
process of granting visas had become more complicated in the wake of 
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We need to strike a balance between securing our borders and open 
doors," she said.

Harty refused to comment on specific cases where visas had been 
denied, but she noted that all visa applications have to be vetted by 
officials in the Department of Homeland Security before they are 
passed to the State Department.

In the case of Tinker-Salas, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said 
that he would henceforth discourage deputies from interviewing 
academics on campus.

The FBI issued a statement in which it said government officials 
should consider the timing and the venue of their interviews. The 
statement also said the government had no intention of placing the 
professor or Pomona students in "an uncomfortable situation."

"We must acknowledge the potential that academics have links to 
terrorism," Harold Krent, a dean and professor at the Chicago-Kent 
College of Law, said by e-mail. "But with these recent investigations 
(it is clear) that our government should move with extreme caution in 
investigating academics both for fear of shutting out speech and of 
chilling both speech and association as in the (Tinker-Salas) case."

As for Waskar Ari, officials at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln 
said last month that they remain in the dark about why the government 
refused to issue a visa.

Ari said that he still has no idea what was holding up his visa.

Unofficially, Ari has been told that his visa application was being 
held up because of a Homeland Security background investigation. The 
university had applied for an expedited visa for Ari in June.

"In mid-October a friend of mine with good connections at the federal 
government told me that I was under intense investigation," he said 
in an e-mail exchange from Bolivia, where is teaching history again.

"She said more than one U.S. agency of intelligence was checking my 
background and with no time limits. Then I was aware how serious was 
this case. I do not know how long this is going to last and how long 
the UNL (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) is going to wait for me."

University officials are puzzled as well.

"He is still in limbo," said Patrick Jones, an assistant professor of 
history. "We have not been given any information formally of what the 
problem is."

Jones said he was not sure whether politics played a role in Ari's 
visa situation, "but he is seen as a moderate in Bolivia and is 
criticized for being too pro-American."

Ari received his doctorate from Georgetown University, Jones noted.

Chuck Tripp, a professor of political science at Westminster College 
in Salt Lake City, saw politics at play in the case of the Venezuelan 
and Bolivian professors.

"Unfortunately, in both cases," Tripp said, " ... no individual legal 
rights have been violated and, further, as far as I can tell, the 
academic freedoms of these two gentlemen have not been assaulted, 
even though we might expect as much. In other words, there's no clear 
proof of (politics)."

The administration has been heavily critical of Venezuelan President 
Hugo Chavez, and Chavez has lashed out against President Bush. Also 
relations between the administration and Bolivia's new president, Evo 
Morales, a populist like Chavez, have been troubled.

Tinker-Salas, at Pomona College, said that the sheriff's deputies 
wanted to know if there were leaders in the Venezuelan community, who 
they were and where the community congregated.

He said he told them that the community, such as it was, tended to be 
in Miami, not Los Angeles.

"They then asked about the relationship between the community and the 
Venezuelan government, embassy and other officials," he recalled, 
speaking of the meeting he said lasted about 25 minutes.

The professor, a specialist in Latin America, said he told the 
deputies that most of the information they were seeking was available 
through a simple Internet search. But he said that when he spoke that 
way to the deputies, they changed their approach.

"When pushed on these matters the questions turned personal," he 
said, "about my citizenship, the school from which I graduated. Again 
questions to which they had the answers since in their portfolio was 
a copy of my Pomona College Web profile that gave them this information."

Tinker-Salas said he and the college's president had discussed the incident.

"My concerns, as President Oxtoby has already stated, have to do with 
academic freedoms and the impact that this sort of visit has on our 
ability to critically engage and debate issues without fear of 
government intervention," he said.


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