A LETTER CONCERNING INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL TO NAVSA (4/15/2025)

A LETTER CONCERNING INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL TO NAVSA, 4/15/2025

Dear NAVSA friends: 

We are aware that some travelers to the United States have been detained at the border and subjected to harassment and even arrest and deportation at the hands of US authorities. These stories are profoundly concerning; they combine with repressive policies on University campuses, including the abduction of colleagues and students and the unannounced cancellation of student visas. The result is a war on knowledge and study that has no precedent in our time as scholars. 

Please know that the organizers of the 2025 conference are monitoring these disturbing dynamics as closely as is humanly possible and are deeply aware of the uncertainty and fear in our membership now. 

Regular academic procedures are far from the most important topics in times of sociopolitical crisis, but as organizers of the 2025 NAVSA meeting in Washington DC, we are keenly aware of how broader political dynamics can have local ramifications. 

We hope to welcome as many of you as possible to DC in November, and hope sincerely that the travel situation might stabilize or clarify, particularly for our most vulnerable colleagues.

The conference has always had a digital option, which we had originally intended for use by those unable to travel to DC for financial reasons.

But we now see this as a potentially safe option to consider for those NAVSA colleagues who feel, with justification, that the conditions for international or even domestic travel are too dangerous for them now. We do not want anyone to risk their safety in order to travel to NAVSA.

Colleagues who submitted a regular paper or panel and are accepted to the conference will have the option to shift to a digital presentation if required, for any reason; we will prepare more information about this and update the conference website in the coming days and weeks. 

For now: we are profoundly sorry to have to write this, and consider the rising threat of anti-immigrant, racist attacks on freedom of expression and the pursuit of knowledge to be one feature of an imperial nineteenth century we have not yet outlived. There will be emergency sessions devoted to these matters at the conference, including practical training sessions on organizing the academic workplace, teaching in fascist states, & the curtailment of academic freedom in periods of imperial collapse. 

Please watch the website, and reach out directly with any questions at all: navsa@georgetown.edu.

Sincerely yours and in solidarity,

NAVSA 2025 Organizing Committee 

April 15, 2025