Joint statement from the MESA Board, Task Force, and CAF to follow-up on the June 16 Advisory concerning the latest iteration of the Trump administration’s travel bans.
The MESA Board of Directors and its Task Force on Civil and Human Rights call on all U.S. universities and colleges to recognize the Trump administration’s reversal of the unlawful mass visa revocations that have terrorized international students and scholars in recent weeks. We urge campus administrations to immediately inform their communities and recent alumni that international students and scholars remain legally entitled to stay in the United States. Termination of a SEVIS record does not affect a student's lawful status inside the U.S.
The Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association and its Committee on Academic Freedom decry in the strongest of terms the growing number of cases of colleges and universities calling on police to repress campus protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We also deplore actions and statements from officials that seek to delegitimize student and faculty activists and their criticism of the war.
MESA joins a statement amongst 74 NGOs to call upon the Egyptian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release 29-year-old student and researcher Ahmed Samir Santawy.
MESA joins a letter with 15 NGOs, led by Reporters Without Borders and Free Press Unlimited, to Josep Borrell and Eamon Gilmore of the European Union concerning the case of the Moroccan historian and journalist Maâti Monjib, which MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom (MENA wing) has followed with growing urgency.
House Committee on Education and Labor requests documents and further information from the Department of Education and expresses deep concern over the implications for academic freedom of its public threats to the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies over its Title VI funding as a National Resource Center for area studies.
In a narrow vote (8-8 with the Chief Justice casting a tie breaking vote) the Turkish Constitutional Court found that the rights of the Peace Petitioners had been violated. The decision should have precedential effect that will impact all the trials of petition signatories, bringing great relief to hundreds of Turkish academics. MESA’s joint letter of 24 July 2019 to the Constitutional Court of Turkey expressed support of the signatories’ rights to freedom of expression and assembly. MESA’s Committee on Academic Freedom has written numerous letters regarding the persecution of the Peace Petition signatories.