{"id":37665,"date":"2017-01-30T10:58:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T18:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=37665"},"modified":"2017-01-30T10:58:11","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T18:58:11","slug":"face-trumps-muslim-ban-academics-responsibility-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/face-trumps-muslim-ban-academics-responsibility-act\/","title":{"rendered":"In the face of Trump\u2019s Muslim ban, all academics have a responsibility to act"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"trumptravelprotest\"<\/a><\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order<\/a> preventing nationals of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia from entering the US. Syrian refugees are indefinitely banned, and other refugees are banned for 120 days. It\u2019s not clear what comes next.<\/p>\n

During his campaign, Trump also stated<\/a> his intention to remove all 11 million \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d from the country. The nation is waiting to see what will happen to them.<\/p>\n

In migration studies, there is a general lamentation about the eroding of the \u201cpolitics of compassion<\/a>\u201d and the development of what Hannah Arendt and Rony Brauman called \u201cpolitics of pity<\/a>\u201d that has replaced compassion, empathy and justice. Compassion takes place when the person suffering is in front of the person who is not; pity occurs at a distance.<\/p>\n

Humanism and cosmopolitanism allow the politics of compassion to occur. Otherwise, only the politics of pity emerge. As Paul Farmer pointed out<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The road from unstable emotions to hard entitlements \u2013 rights \u2013 is one we must travel if we are to transform human values into meaningful and effective programs that serve precisely those who need our empathy and solidarity most.<\/em><\/p>\n

This exercise is not related to any culture, be it Islamic or Western. Some countries belonging to the former culture have received Syrian refugees (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan<\/a>) and others have not (the Gulf countries<\/a>). Some Western countries<\/a>, such as Germany and Sweden took in Syrian refugees; others did not<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump, by signing this executive order, has radically redefined the politics of migration in the United States. He has indicated that his perception of geography is binary, dividing the world into Muslim-lands and non-Muslim-lands \u2013 in the very same manner that some radical Islamists do.<\/p>\n

Jacques Derrida has argued<\/a> that hospitality is always tinted with hostility and fear. Sociologists often argue<\/a> that xenophobia and racism are generated by the presence of the \u201cother\u201d, which migrants and refugees are often characterised as.<\/p>\n

I am alarmed by the surge of new populism in USA and Europe<\/a>, which is tearing apart the universal right to asylum. The only way to counter this trend is via free debate in the public sphere. Migrants and refugees do not have to be strangers. This is where civil society and the press could step in, given the chance.<\/p>\n