The Association of University Presses expressed its deep disappointment with the recent US Supreme Court decision upholding the current US administration’s travel and immigration ban on mostly majority-Muslim countries. As Justice Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Ginsburg, this deeply anti-American policy is religious and race-based bigotry “masquerade[ing]behind a facade of national security concerns.”
The Association and its members uphold the high ideals of scholarship: intellectual freedom, openness to new knowledge and ideas, and the diversity and inclusion that helps to ensure knowledge and ideas are examined thoroughly and critically. These virtues become impossible when minds are closed and whole communities are excluded by a nation that otherwise claims to be at the vanguard of scientific and intellectual progress. The travel ban compromises the work and values of the Association, our members, and their parent institutions, and remains an indefensible intrusion on academic—and other—freedom regardless of the Court’s ruling.
About the Association of University Presses
AUPresses is an organization of 161 international nonprofit scholarly publishers. Since 1937, the Association of University Presses advances the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge. The Association holds intellectual freedom, integrity, stewardship, and equity and inclusion as core values. AUPresses members are active across many scholarly disciplines, including the humanities, arts, and sciences, publish significant regional and literary work, and are innovators in the world of digital publishing.