The New McCarthyism

"After September 11 this became a very great concern," says Penny Rosser, director of the International Scholars Office at MIT. "The number of delays and denials skyrocketed for students and scholars."

Professors and organizations accustomed to studying Mayan ruins and evolutionary theory suddenly found themselves writing letters to Condoleezza Rice, pleading the innocence of colleagues. As time passed and the protests grew louder, the feds eased up a little. Rosser says the number of annual visa delays for MIT scholars has dropped from the double digits to "fewer than a handful now."

But that doesn't mean the problem has been solved. If anything, the selection of targeted scholars has become even harder to explain.

Greek economics professor John Milios made the American Association of University Professors' list of most troubling cases. Last year, he was on his way to a conference at the State University of New York when he was stopped at JFK airport. Milios said government officials questioned him about his political affiliations. He specializes in Marxist theory, belongs to the Coalition of the Radical Left, a minority party in Greece, and was twice a candidate for parliament. They sent him home.

Meanwhile, Bolivian historian Waskar Ari gained near-celebrity status when his visa application was blocked by the Department of Homeland Security for two years. As a Ph.D. candidate at Georgetown, Ari specialized in studying race and the politics of the native people of Latin America. The subject is close to his heart — he's a member of the indigenous Aymara and writes about their history.

The University of Nebraska was eager to hire him. Before starting the new job, he went back to Bolivia to visit his family and switch his visa status from student to professor. But for unknown reasons, the university was told that his application had been passed to Homeland Security for a "security check." As months passed without word, the university and historian groups around the world took up Ari's cause.

Finally, the university hired an immigration lawyer to sue Homeland Security. Only when faced with the prospect of appearing before a judge did the government relent. Ari finally got his visa in July. Yet members of the bespectacled set are still outraged.

"The idea that these scholars pose even the remotest threat to America and U.S. national security seems extremely far-fetched," says Barbara Weinstein, president of the American Historical Association. "All I can imagine is, we're starting to have arbitrary background checks on foreign scholars."

Michael Maggio, the lawyer who represented Ari, says it's more complicated than it appears. In Ari's case, the professor seemed to be a victim of guilt by association. The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, is friendly with Venezuela's anti-Bush President Hugo Chavez. Maggio found out that Ari had been "denounced" by critics in Bolivia, and it took the U.S. government a while to figure out that the accusations were false.

"The reach is incredibly broad," Maggio says. If you're open to talking with someone whose political views clash with the Bush administration, "The conclusion is drawn that you're one of them."

But Cleveland immigration lawyer David Leopold isn't so quick to cry McCarthyism. To him, the situation smacks of a less pernicious, more pervasive problem: garden-variety government bungling. Many people — from doctors to professors — have visa trouble because they have common last names and the feds confuse them with someone else.

"Basically, you're relying on [government] databases that are very cumbersome and in many cases don't work," he says. "Many good people get caught in this sort of web."

In this climate, even a British music professor is not safe. In August 2006, Nalini Ghuman, a teacher at Mills College in California, was stopped at the San Francisco International Airport on her way back from a research trip. Armed immigration officers tore up her visa and "seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks," according to an account in The New York Times. A government report also mistakenly described her as "Hispanic."

Although Ghuman had been living in this country for a decade, her visa was revoked. She has been stuck in Britain ever since. She still has no idea why.