Dive Brief:
- Several college faculty members and students have already been impacted by a recent executive order banning traveler entry into the United States from select Middle Eastern nations.
- In a series of tweets and Facebook posts, students and professors shared their dismay over questioning and detainment at domestic airports. Citizens throughout the country have launched protests against the order, which has drawn criticism for its perceived lack of transparency and disruption of personal freedoms.
- Several institutions, including Indiana University at Bloomington and the University of Notre Dame, have denounced the order.
Dive Insight:
While institutions at large are not likely to sustain massive disruptions in research or student enrollment, the idea that individual lives could be put on hold for nationalistic interests is a complex one for campuses. Leaders should take the lessons which have been hard learned by the media and create dialog around both sides of this issue making clear that institutional positions are based upon the mission and ideals of the school, and not partisan ideology.
Students and faculty which have experienced division on campus in recent months will look to institutions to be as middle-of-the-road as possible on these matters, and schools should create the space for all parties and all opinions to be heard in scholarly debate, not emotional town halls or public discourse where emotions and control can be shifted in an instant.