{"id":1326,"date":"2017-03-02T11:37:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T11:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2017-03-02T11:37:19","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T11:37:19","slug":"open-letter-to-the-u-s-administration-by-h-france-chief-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=1326","title":{"rendered":"Open letter to the U.S. Administration by H-France Chief Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"

From H-France.net<\/a>, via h-france@lists.uakron.edu<\/span><\/a>, 1 March 2017<\/p>\n

An Open Letter to\u00a0President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and\u00a0Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly<\/p>\n

On 22 February 2017, our colleague and friend Henry Rousso, a French citizen and eminent scholar of fascism and its continuing memory in France, was detained for more than ten hours at Houston\u2019s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.\u00a0 He had arrived from France as an invited speaker of the Hagler Institute for Advanced Studies at Texas A&M University. (Professor Rousso\u2019s description of his experience can be found here<\/a>).\u00a0 As Professor Rousso recounts, although in possession of a valid visa, he was extensively interrogated, fingerprinted, bodily searched, and threatened with deportation\u2014an outcome which, an officer informed him, would have led to him being handcuffed, chained, and shackled.\u00a0 Without the intervention of officials from Texas A&M University, Professor Rousso would have been unjustly denied entry to the United States.<\/p>\n

Professor Rousso\u2019s treatment is deeply disturbing to us as individuals who expect all people to be treated with fundamental human decency. \u00a0\u00a0His treatment also disturbs us as a scholarly community that thrives on international exchange and cooperation.\u00a0 We attend conferences, participate in seminars, and access libraries, archives, and research centers across the globe.\u00a0 Professor Rousso is himself an exemplar of this international spirit.\u00a0 He has served as a visiting researcher and professor at Harvard University (1986-1987), New York University (1992), the United States Holocaust Museum (2006), and Columbia University (2016-2017).\u00a0 The knowledge and expertise that he brought to these institutions benefitted their students and faculty, and no doubt he also benefitted from these exchanges.<\/p>\n

The work of scholars in all fields\u2014the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities\u2014is enriched through international exchange and cooperation.\u00a0 As we come together, we share our research and our methods of analysis. We learn from each other, enhancing the knowledge that infuses our research and our teaching.\u00a0 The new ideas that help scholars develop more effective medicines, improve technologies, and better decipher the human condition have their greatest effect as scholars share ideas and challenge each other\u2019s assumptions in discussions at conference and seminars.\u00a0 We believe that such cooperation is deeply harmed by shifts in policy and practice that discourage or inhibit individuals from travelling across borders and in attitudes that view such movements of peoples as dangerous and threatening.<\/p>\n

The United States is an important crossroads in the international network of scholars and scientists.\u00a0 Through the Fulbright Program and other similar initiatives, scholars in the United States have benefitted from the hospitality of many nations who have welcomed American scholars as fellow researchers and teachers.\u00a0 These American scholars can count on their rights and dignity being respected and protected by their host governments.\u00a0 We at H-France urge the United States government and the Trump administration to protect the rights and the dignity of all people who arrive on its shores and to foster an environment that welcomes those who seek to participate in its scholarly life.\u00a0 Failure to do so will damage America\u2019s reputation and its role as a leader in pursuit of knowledge.<\/p>\n

On Behalf of the H-France Editorial Board,<\/p>\n

David Kammerling Smith<\/p>\n

H-France Editor-in-Chief<\/p>\n

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From H-France.net, via h-france@lists.uakron.edu, 1 March 2017 An Open Letter to\u00a0President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and\u00a0Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly On 22 February 2017, our colleague and friend Henry Rousso, a French citizen and eminent … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[319,320,321],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-news","tag-h-france","tag-henry-rousso","tag-us-immigration"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1330,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}