Obama Lawyer Disappoints Foes of ‘Ideological Exclusion’ of Foreign Scholars

A top Justice Department lawyer today disappointed free-speech advocates who were hoping the Obama administration would end the federal government’s use of “ideological exclusion,” the practice of barring foreign intellectuals from the United States based on their views or associations.

As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral arguments today in a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration’s 2004 decision to deny a visa to Tariq Ramadan — a Swiss citizen and leading Islamic intellectual hired by the University of Notre Dame — an assistant U.S. attorney, David Jones, urged the court to uphold the denial, the Reuters news agency reported.

Speaking before a three-judge panel of the court, Mr. Jones argued that the judicial branch has no power to weigh in on visa decisions made by U.S. consulates abroad, and that a decision by the court to wade into the controversy would leave the federal government in a “quagmire” of having to deal with similar appeals, Reuters reported.

In a letter sent last week to top officials in the Obama administration, dozens of academic, free-speech, and civil-rights organizations had argued that the nation’s own interests were harmed by ideological exclusion, which was commonly practiced by the federal government during the cold war and was revived by the Bush administration after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The practice “impoverishes academic and political debate inside the United States,” sends the world the message that “our country is more interested in silencing than engaging its critics,” and “undermines our ability to support political dissidents in other countries,” the letter said.

In a written statement issued after today’s proceedings, Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who argued in court on behalf of those opposing Mr. Ramadan’s exclusion, said he was disappointed “to see the Obama administration’s lawyers arguing that the courts have no role in reviewing the national-security decisions of the executive branch.”

Mr. Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said, “ We had become accustomed to hearing that argument from the Bush administration, but we had hoped not to hear it from the Obama administration.” He expressed optimism, nonetheless, that the appeals court would rule for his side. —Peter Schmidt