Seven Massachusetts colleges and universities made their opposition to the Trump administration’s continued attempts to implement a so-called “Muslim travel ban” known on Friday, joining a total of 31 schools across the nation in filing an amicus brief.
The brief, filed in the federal appeals court for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia (one of the courts that ruled against the ban), marks the second such legal action by universities in defense of nationals from six Muslim-majority nations, who under the attempted ban would be barred from entering the United States for 90 days.
“These individuals make significant contributions to their fields of study and to campus life by bringing their unique perspectives and talents to amici’s classrooms, laboratories, and performance spaces,” the brief read, adding that the executive order had indicated “from the highest levels of government, that discrimination is not only acceptable but appropriate.”
According to the brief, top educators and administrative figures at the colleges – which include Northeastern University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Brandeis University and Tufts University – feel that the emergence of the ban, a legal manifestation of the Islamophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric advocated by Trump on the campaign rhetoric, has impacted their ability to recruit global talent both in student and faculty populations.
The first ban, signed by Trump on Jan. 27, was shot down the following month by a court in Seattle, which criticized the ideology behind the bill in addition to its vague, sweeping wording. The most recent executive order, initiated March 6, was halted by a federal judge in Hawaii, who issued the decision hours before the ban would have gone into effect.
The Boston Collegian 