27,000 academics slam Trump’s travel ban as ‘inhumane, ineffective and un-American’

Hundreds of them are at Princeton

Over 500 Princeton academics, including six Nobel Laureates, four MacArthur Fellows, and over 20 members of the National Academy of Sciences have signed onto a letter opposing Trump’s immigration executive order.

The full list of signatories currently boasts over 27,000 names.

The letter decries the executive order as “fatally disruptive to the lives of these immigrants, their families, and the communities of which they form an integral part.”

The academics have also described the measures to be “inhumane, ineffective, and un-American.”

Among the Princeton signatories are 17 professors emeritus, 40 associate professors, over 250 professors, and over 200 postdocs and researchers.

Professor Lyman Page, from the Physics Department, which has had 18 Nobel Laureates as of 2016, told The Tab that he sees the EO as “antithetical to what our country should strive to, and once did, represent.”

“More practically, I see them as decreasing our national security. On a more departmental and personal level, I have colleagues who come from the very countries singled out. Through their science they are advancing humanity and making our country, and the world, a better place. It is outrageous that they and their families are being treated this way,” Page said.

Sir Angus Dean, Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus, who won a Nobel Prize last year, also shared an op-ed with The Tab.

In it, Deaton wrote that of the four Americans to be given the Nobel in 2015, three were immigrants, and the fourth was the son of an immigrant.

“One of us, Aziz Sancar, whose work on DNA repair might one day lead to a cure for cancer, was born of illiterate parents in Turkey, a Muslim-majority country. Another, William Campbell, who among other achievements discovered the cure for river blindness, was born in Ireland, a country that might well be labelled as ‘terror-prone’,” he wrote.

Yet, he also said that “the great American universities are not blameless” for Trump’s rise.

“Elite universities run the risk of serving, or being seen to serve, only the very rich, minorities, and foreigners, leaving little access for the American working class,” he wrote.

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