On Friday evening, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending visas to citizens of seven countries for at least 90 days. Among the many other implications of this ban — none of which we want to minimise with our focus on the implications for academics — this now implies that (1) students who are citizens (even dual citizens) of these countries are now unable to study in the US or attend conferences there, and (2) academics who are citizens of these countries and who legally work and live in the US are now unable to leave (to, say, attend conferences or visit another academic institution), as they would not be allowed back in.
We receive many inquiries each year from strong applicants from these seven countries, and according to a statement issued by many US-based academics, more than 3,000 Iranian students received PhDs from American universities in the past 3 years. Across our nine faculty members, we currently have funding available for numerous PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. If any student is stranded outside of the US, we of course hope that they are able to make it back quickly, but have funding for internships that would allow them to work from here in the interim. In organising conferences, we and our wider UCL colleagues are doing all we can to organise them in places without such bans in place, and where that is not possible to enable remote participation.
Most of all, as a group that prides itself on the quality and openness of its research and on its international reach, we would like to re-affirm our commitment to working with the best possible students and academics, regardless of their religion or their country of origin (or indeed anything aside from their scientific contributions). To quote a statement from the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR), “the open exchange of ideas requires freedom of movement.” To address the full effects of this ban we of course need far more international cooperation, but we hope that even our small actions can help mitigate the damage that has already been done to our friends and colleagues, both within and outside of the US, and that promises to continue to be done in the future.
Nicolas Courtois
Emiliano de Cristofaro
George Danezis
Jens Groth
Sarah Meiklejohn
Steven Murdoch
David Pym
Angela Sasse
Gianluca Stringhini