Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy appointed 15 students and faculty members to an advisory panel last week designed to create an admissions policy for Iranian students compliant with United States law. The creation of the panel follows a month of controversy over the University of Massachusetts’ decision to stop admitting Iranian students into certain graduate science and technology programs.
Following last month’s decision, the University announced a revision to the policy saying that students will be admitted as long as they have individualized study plans to meet the requirements of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012.
“The committee should identify how our campus can sustain our core values of inclusion and the free and open exchange of ideas while acting in accordance with the legal mandates that all public research universities must obey,” Subbaswamy said at a Feb. 19 Faculty Senate meeting.
The panel was created to ensure that UMass students do not face denials of visas because of their area of study. It will also ensure that UMass faculty and staff are not penalized for violating U.S. federal policy, which denies Iranian students planning to work with energy research in Iran from a U.S. education.
More generally, the panel is attempting to uphold the University’s standards against the racial and national discrimination of students while complying with American federal laws.
The chairs of the committee include Elizabeth Chilton, the associate vice chancellor for research and engagement and Tim Anderson, the dean of the College of Engineering.
The decision to refuse admittance to Iranian students into certain programs occurred as a result of new University interpretations of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syrian Human Rights Act of 2012.
While the University previously enforced a different analysis of the law, an inquiry from a student caused complications over the admittance of Iranian students to certain programs in fields of science, technology and engineering.
Many students, faculty members and organizations such as the National Iranian American Council spoke against this policy, arguing that it is an unnecessary and discriminatory addition to federal law.
Critics of UMass’ policy have argued that the 2012 law only applies to the admittance of study visas to Iranian citizens, which are currently distributed based on individual circumstances. As a result, these critics feel that the University is unnecessarily discriminating against students, who have already obtained student visas, based on nationality when it is not their place to do so.
The dissatisfaction felt by students about the policy resulted in substantial backlash. The “No to the UMass Educational Ban on Iranian Nationals” Facebook page has more than 3,900 likes.
Subbaswamy said he hopes the committee will make proper recommendations to the current policy by early April, at which point University administrators will decide how to implement the new findings into the admissions policy, according to a UMass press release.
The committee’s report will be made public once the findings are concluded.
Stuart Foster can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @Stuart_C_Foster.
