Princeton and Rutgers have both signed a letter to President Donald Trump stating that his executive order barring travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries into the United States is a threat to American academia.
While the White House struggles to cobble together a ban that would pass muster with federal courts, Princeton University has joined 16 other schools in a legal brief opposing President Donald Trump's executive order barring travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries into the United States.
In addition, the presidents of Princeton and Rutgers were among more than 40 college administrators signing on to a letter to the president, warning that the order posed a threat to American academia - and to the founding principles of the nation.
With their large populations of international students, many of them engaged in vital research programs, New Jersey's universities stand to suffer from the Jan. 27 executive order, which targets citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
In an email to the Rutgers community shortly after the executive order was announced, President Robert Barchi noted that there are an estimated 17,000 students at U.S. colleges and universities from these seven countries.
Princeton joins fight against Trump travel ban
"We share the view of many of our peer institutions who have argued strongly that many aspects of the executive order run counter to the academic and social mission of higher education," he said.
After a federal court put a hold on the ban shortly after the order came down, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against reinstating it, the president vowed at a news conference Thursday to issue a new set of restrictions - presumably one tailored to meet the courts' standards.
During the chaos that prevailed when the ban was briefly in place, many students from the affected countries found themselves stranded overseas, desperately scrambling to get back to their classrooms or their laboratories.
Their universities, too, were thrown into turmoil, unable to make plans for international conferences or study abroad programs, unable to count on professors fulfilling their teaching duties if they couldn't return home in time to start the spring semester.
Princeton and the other universities filed their friend-of-the court brief in New York, saying that those affected by the order benefit not just their own campuses, but also the extended country - and world.
While they wisely agree that keeping Americans safe from terrorism is a matter of highest priority, the administrators are right that security concerns can be addressed without overturning values Americans hold dear, such as the free exchange of ideas and the free flow of individuals across borders.
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