FROM THE 2006 MEMBERSHIP CONFERENCE Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Director of the ACLU national security program, on ideological exclusion BLOG > Keep Out: The New Yorker on Ideological Exclusion RESOURCES > Timeline of Ideological Exclusions > Legal Background > Event: An Evening Without... > "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" Screening and Panel Discussion NEWS > ACLU Rebukes U.S. Government for Failing to Act on Visa Request of South African Scholar (8/10/2007) > New Motion in Federal Court Seeks to Strike Down Ideological Exclusion (2/23/2007) > U.S. Groups Renew Legal Challenge to Lift Ban on Muslim Scholar (2/5/2007) > Groups Condemn Decision to Deny Oxford University Professor's Visa (9/25/2006) > ACLU Seeks Records on Denial of Entry to Foreign Scholars (3/16/2005)

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging a provision of the Patriot Act that is being used to deny visas to foreign scholars whose political views the government disfavors. The lawsuit charges that the provision, known as the "ideological exclusion" provision, is being used to prevent United States citizens and residents from hearing speech that is protected by the First Amendment.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors and PEN American Center, and also names as a plaintiff Professor Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss intellectual who is widely regarded as a leading scholar of the Muslim world. The government revoked Professor Ramadan's visa under the ideological exclusion provision in 2004, preventing him from assuming a tenured teaching position at the University of Notre Dame. Read More >>

In March 2005, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's use of the Patriot Act ideological exclusion provision and about the practice of ideological exclusion more generally - a practice that has led to the recent exclusions of Dora María Telléz, a Nicaraguan scholar who had been offered a position at Harvard University, as well as numerous scholars from Cuba. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in November 2005 to enforce this Freedom of Information Act request.