Statement on Immigration Executive Order
Posted by bushae on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 in News.
The following statement reflects only the views of the individual signees.
February 3, 2017
As teachers and researchers in Islamic Studies and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, we stand together to oppose President Trump’s executive order to suspend the admittance of all refugees into the United States for 120 days and of all Syrian refugees until further notice, and to deny entry into the United States to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.
The ban on refugees hurts exceptionally vulnerable people, who have already undergone intense vetting and scrutiny. We view this as a discriminatory measure intended to exclude Muslim immigrants from American borders. We believe this order serves to give legitimacy to anti-Muslim prejudice. Moreover, the broad restrictions on travel pose a danger to the work of our faculty and students, interfering with the free exchange of ideas that the university represents. The president’s decision to announce this ban on Holocaust Remembrance Day reminds us of the dark history of exclusionary US immigration practices that prevented Jews fleeing Nazism from seeking refuge in United States.
Signed
*Allison Schachter, Associate Professor, Jewish Studies and English; Director, Program in Jewish Studies
*Richard McGregor, Associate Professor, Religion and Islamic Studies; Chair, Department of Religious Studies
*Shaul Kelner, Associate Professor, Sociology and Jewish Studies
*Ari Joskowicz, Associate Professor, Jewish Studies and European Studies
*Julia Cohen, Associate Professor, Jewish Studies and History
*Anand Taneja, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
*Jay Geller, Associate Professor, Jewish Studies and Divinity
*Diana Bell, Mellon Assistant Professor of Religion
*Issam Eido, Senior Lecturer Religious Studies
*Samira Sheikh, Associate Professor, History and Asian Studies
*Amy-Jill Levine, University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies & E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies
*Leor Halevi, Associate Professor, History and Law
*Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller, Associate Professor, French and Jewish Studies
*Robert Barksy, Professor, French, Jewish Studies, English, and Law
*Judy Klass, Senior Lecturer, Jewish Studies
*Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman, Associate Professor, Jewish Studies and Law
*Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies
*David Wasserstein, Professor of History and Jewish Studies; Eugene Greener, Jr. Professor of Jewish Studies
*Adam Meyer, Associate Professor, Jewish Studies
*Yifat Crouvi, Lecturer, Jewish Studies