Increasingly strict U.S. border policies have forced many international scholars and organizations to move academic activities to other countries like Canada after originally planning to convene in the U.S.
Many foreign scholars have chosen to avoid traveling to the U.S. as the country has been intervening in universities and academic institutions, ostensibly to target anti-American moves and support for terrorism.
Some Canadian scholars have suffered unprecedented obstacles from U.S. customs officers on their way to the U.S. for academic conferences. Nathan Kalman-Lamb, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick, described an invasive interrogation process when attempting to cross the border.
"He went through all my belongings. He unfurled every sock. He flipped through every page of my book. He went through every single item in my wallet. And then after that kind of interview and interrogation and in that search, he then asked me to open my phone, instructed me to give him my phone, and he took my phone and all my documentation away with him, and he had that for over an hour that he was searching those materials. I missed my flight as a consequence of this. And after about three hours in total, he finally came back and told me that he would allow me to enter the United States on that occasion," said Kalman-Lamb, who had once lived and worked in the U.S. for six years as a visiting scholar.
The Canadian professor said he had never undergone difficulties when entering the U.S. previously, but since the current administration took office, he has been intercepted twice, and on one of the occasions, he was even denied entry to the country.
He said he tried to ask for an explanation on his obstructions from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but failed to get a definite answer.
Kalman-Lamb believes that the border interrogations are a result of his criticism of the state of Israel.
"I am 99 percent certain that the reason I was stopped is because of my speech related to my views on the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza. I am myself Jewish. I am not an anti-Semite in any possible construal of the word, except if you construe anti-Semitism to mean legitimate criticism of the state of Israel for its violent practices," said Kalman-Lamb, who is also a member of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS), an international academic organization with around 40 percent of its members living in Canada.
Dr. Travers, the president-elect of NASSS and a professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University, has decided to downsize the society's annual conference in the United States and set up a sub-venue in Vancouver, Canada, completing the meeting via video link. These decisions were made in consideration of the recent U.S. threats to Canada's sovereignty and economy and the difficulties in entry review reported by more and more members.
"But what became apparent to us was that even if we could completely move the conference to a Canadian location, that wouldn't address many of the concerns of our American members. But because they're afraid about what might happen to them when they attempt to return to the United States. And there have been too many examples of faculty members and graduate students who have left the United States and even though they had a valid visa to be there, they were denied reentry," said Travers, who goes by a single name.
Stricter entry review forces int'l academic activities out of US
