[NewMusic] Protest Deportation of Mills Professor

[Katherine Setar]

Hello New Music People,

I am a member of the American Musicological Society.  Our usually
mundane scholarly e-mails   have suddenly become politically charged.
The president of the AMS is requesting that people begin a write-in
campaign to protest the detaining and deportation of  a Professor of
Musicology at Mills.  Please see below.  This is the second time I've
heard about foreign scholars being denied access to the United
States.

If your conscience moves you,  please send a letter to the appropriate
agencies.

Thanks,

Katherine Setar
*******
at http://www.ams-net.org/from_the_president.php

30 April 2007

Dear Colleagues,

As I reported in the President's Message in the February 2007 issue of
the AMS NewsletterPDF, one of our members, a citizen of the United
Kingdom, was detained without explanation at the San Francisco airport
this past August upon returning to the U.S. to resume her teaching
position here in the United States.  Her visa was summarily revoked,
and she was forced to return to the U.K.  When she was unable to
return to the U.S. in order to give a paper at the Annual Meeting of
our Society, the AMS Board of Directors sent a letter to the U.S.
State Department, to the U.S. Consulate in London, and to the
appropriate legislative representatives in Washington, expressing our
profound consternation and anxiety over her treatment and our desire
that her situation be resolved as soon as possible.  In the
President's Message I did not mention her name, Nalini Ghuman, or her
academic affiliation, Mills College, because she felt that this was a
simple misunderstanding that could be resolved quickly out of the
public eye.  It has now been more than eight months since the incident
at the San Francisco airport, and there has been no apparent movement
toward resolution.  At the request of the Board of Directors I am
therefore sending you the statement below, issued by Mills College, in
order to inform you more fully of her status.

I also ask as a matter of urgency that you consider acting on behalf
of our fellow musicologist by writing directly to Ms. Jane Burt-Lynn
at the U.S. Department of State to express concern over Dr. Ghuman's
situation.  To that end I append a sample letter below the statement
from Mills College.  Should you write, it would help if you could send
copies of your letter to Dr. Ghuman's congressional representative,
Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and to Mills College, but the most
important gesture at this point would be a letter to Ms. Burt-Lynn.

I realize that this is a busy time of year, and do not lightly ask you
to add another letter to your list of things to do, but I would ask
you to consider Dr. Ghuman's extraordinary situation and help her by
writing today.

With thanks in advance for your attention,
Charles M. Atkinson
President

Statement Concerning Dr. Nalini Ghuman
Assistant Professor of Music
Mills College
Oakland, California

In August 2006, British citizen Dr. Nalini Ghuman was detained for 8
hours at San Francisco airport after returning from a month-long
research visit to the UK.  Professor Ghuman had previously held F1
student visas since September 1996 while earning a PhD from the
University of California at Berkeley.  She has been employed as an
Assistant Professor of Music at Mills College since 2003, and was in
possession of an H1B visa, issued in London, valid until 31 May 2008.

Instead of being allowed to return to her home in Oakland to start her
fourth year at Mills, Dr. Ghuman had her visa revoked and was denied
re-entry to the country where she has lived, studied, and worked for
10 years.  A distinguished music graduate of Oxford University and of
Kings College, London, Dr. Ghuman is completing her book focused on
the influence of India on English music in the early twentieth
century.

Bay Area legislators have received dozens of letters protesting Dr
Ghuman's exclusion from the USA, and Mills College has written to the
Department of State urging their office to correct a grave error by
restoring Dr Ghuman's visa immediately so that she can return to her
teaching position without further loss to her students and harm to her
career as a classical music scholar.  Dr. Ghuman's students at Mills
have already waited over eight months for her to be allowed to return
to her teaching duties.  This semester she is teaching her seminar on
music in fin-de-siècle France via professional video-link from the
University of Wales and maintains full contact with her students.  The
government action denying her entry to the U.S. prevented her from
presenting her professional work at the annual meeting of the American
Musicological Society in November 2006.  In response to this the Board
of Directors of the AMS, the largest international association dealing
with music as a branch of learning and scholarship, officially
protested her exclusion in a letter to the Department of State.

Despite numerous requests from herself and from prominent legislators,
Dr. Ghuman has never received an explanation for her exclusion from
the U.S. or for the continuing delay on her application for a
replacement visa.  According to a recent communication received by
Senator Richard Durbin, her application is still awaiting security
clearance at the Department of State in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Ghuman
has been informed by her Member of Parliament's office that the U.S.
London Embassy is convinced that mistaken identity is the issue in her
case.  They state that they are, however, finding it impossible to get
through to the State Department and are frustrated by the lack of
response from Washington.  They have told her MP's office to keep up
their attempts to contact the State Department.

At Mills, faculty members in the Music Department are bewildered by
Dr. Ghuman's exclusion from the U.S., which is keeping her from her
role as a passionate advocate of classical music as part of a liberal
arts education.  According to department head David Bernstein, Dr.
Ghuman came to Mills more than three years ago with great potential as
both a scholar and as a teacher.  Her continuing exclusion from the
U.S. has created uncertainty in the Music Department for her students
and faculty colleagues.

Mary-Ann Milford, Provost and Dean of Faculty at Mills, says that Dr.
Ghuman's absence this year has been a great loss to both her
department and the College because she performed a broad scope of
duties as the College's classical musicologist.  According to Mills
President Janet L. Holmgren, the arbitrary and inexplicable exclusion
of Dr. Ghuman has been a personal tragedy for her and a cause of
distress to Mills and to American higher education.

Sample letter:

Ms. Jane Burt-Lynn, Chief
Public Inquiries Division
Visa Services
United States Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC  20520

Dear Ms. Burt-Lynn:

As a member of the American Musicological Society I am writing to you
to ask your assistance in resolving a serious situation involving one
of our members, Dr. Nalini Ghuman, a citizen of the United Kingdom and
a professor of music at Mills College in Oakland, California.  In
August 2006 Dr. Ghuman was detained upon her return to the United
States, her H-1B visa was revoked, and she was forced to return to the
United Kingdom.  Now, over eight months later, she is still in the
United Kingdom, away from her job and her home, and has as yet
received no explanation for our government's actions.  We in the AMS
find this situation quite alarming, and fervently hope that it can be
resolved as soon as possible.  Dr. Ghuman applied for a new H-1B visa
several months ago.  Any assistance that you can provide in expediting
the processing of her visa application by the Department of State
would be deeply appreciated.

Thank you very much for your efforts on behalf of Dr. Ghuman and her
students, family, friends, and colleagues.

Yours sincerely,



cc: Congresswoman Barbara Lee, United States House of Representatives
     Professor Mary-Ann Milford, Provost, Mills College

Address of Congresswoman Barbara Lee:

Congresswoman Barbara Lee
1301 Clay Street, Suite 1000-N
Oakland, CA  94612

Address at Mills College to which copies of letters can be sent:

Professor Mary-Ann Milford
Provost and Dean of the Faculty
Mills College
5000 MacArthur Boulevard
Oakland, CA  94613