In response to the immigration ban imposed by US President Donald Trump last Friday, over 4,000 scholars, professors and researchers have signed a petition calling all other academics to boycott the international conferences scheduled in the United States in the future. The move aims to provide solidarity to the seven Muslim countries that are affected by the 90-day travel ban for refugees issued by President Trump.
Economics and International Development Studies professor at Trent University, Haroon Akram-Lodhi, said that the petition signed by the academics is their means of supporting their Muslim colleagues in this time of predicament. Akram-Lodhi also held that international conferences are huge money-makers and are significant in the upsurge of a country's economy. "We don't want to give the economic support to the U.S. in this situation," Akram-Lodhi said.
In a report by the Inside Higher Ed, Nadine El-Enany, one of the organizers in the said petition and is also a law professor at the Birkbeck School of Law, University of London said that after the news were bombarded with Trump's travel ban last week, academics have thought of ways on how to help their Muslim associates who are greatly affected by the immigration ban. The petition challenges the "intellectual integrity" of international conferences hosted by the United States considering the executive order currently being enacted by Trump's administration.
According to a report by Chronicle, despite the difficulty of uniting the academics in terms of dealing with political issues, the petition for boycotting the US international conferences has already unified a number of professors in the academe including Emery Berger of the University of Massachusetts and Helen McCarthy, Queen Mary University of London's historian. Berger said, "Science is intended to be free and open, and any place that restricts the travel of scientists to present their work is a problem. We are talking about taking steps to mitigate this problem however we can.
As of the present, there are over 29 million scientists and engineers in the United States and 5.2 million of which are immigrants. Aside from the support for the petition by the students, scholars and professors, there are also 50 Nobel Laureates who conformed to the campaign.
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