To the shameful exclusion tales of Bolivian historian
Waskar Ari and Swiss theologist
Tariq Ramadan, we can now add that of musicologist
Nalini Ghuman, a British citizen of British and South Asian descent. It is hard to imagine how Ms. Ghuman, an expert on Elgar, could pose any kind of threat to the security of the United States. Even Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials who refused her entry admitted that her exclusion was probably a mistake, and "
suggested that perhaps a jilted lover or envious colleague might have written a poison pen letter about her to immigration authorities." Over a year later, Ms. Ghuman has been provided with no further explanation as to why she might be considered a threat, and has been separated from her fiance, her job at
Mills College, and her home of 10 years. In her eloquent words, "
I don't know why it's happened, what I'm accused of . . . There's no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless." My forthcoming article,
A Global Approach to Secret Evidence: How Human Rights Law Can Reform Our Immigration System (soon to be posted on SSRN), details several cases of exclusion or removal of non-citizens, all of Arab, Muslim, or South Asian descent, on the basis of secret evidence. The sloppiness with which the DHS has pursued these cases has led to tragic results for individuals and serious embarassment for the US government, as the
evidentiary basis for removal has often been seriously inaccurate and unreliable. As an evidence professor, these practices make my hair stand on end; as an American academic of South Asian descent, they hit home in a whole different way. In the article, I argue that
human rights law presents a middle path that balances national security interests and individual rights, and should be used by DHS and DOJ in interpreting immigration statutes, drafting immigration regulations, and, perhaps most importantly, training immigration officials. Utopian, perhaps, but a profound shift in institutional culture seems the only way to prevent DHS from turning the lives of any more non-citizens into Kafka-esque nightmares.
(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest.) On Friday and Saturday, Duke University's Department of Cultural Anthropology and Human Rights Center hosted a conference entitled "Scenes of Secrecy: Interdisciplinary Inquiries on Suspicion, Intelligence and Security." With panelists from departments ranging from Asian and Middle Eastern Studies to Literature to Cultural Anthropology and paper titles such as "Recuperating 'America': Homosexuality, National Fantasy, and 'the War on Terror'" and "Minerva and the Militarization of Anthropological Space", the program promised to present unique perspectives on issues of interest to our readers:of polarizing conflict on the complex frontiers of global war, security defines and mobilizes the defense of state sovereignty against multifarious domestic and transnational insurgencies. This conference takes part in the growing public scrutiny of covert methods employed by states and other bodies to gather intelligence — from surveillance and censorship, to detention and torture, to simulation and preemption — that often prioritize security over human rights and even human life. Of special concern are the ways in which individuals and groups become objects of suspicion; how their privacy, integrity, and safety are protected or violated; and how suspicion and vigilance ramify in popular and political culture. Across regional and historical contexts, the conference traces connections between geo-political terrains of invisible governance, and experiences of terror and suspicion that fuel political secrecy as well as the pursuit of transparency.
