Professors Worry about Trump’s Border Wall and How It Could Affect Collaborations with Other Countries

Academics and college professors were unhappy that Donald Trump won the White House on Election Day and are now worried that intellectual exchanges and collaborations will be greatly affected by Trump’s proposed border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Here are some snippets from an Inside Higher Ed article:

In a statement after Trump’s election, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund issued a statement saying that Trump “had built his campaign around thinly veiled anti-immigrant and anti-Latino appeals.” In his kickoff speech for his presidential campaign, in June 2015, Trump described many Mexican immigrants as criminals or rapists. He said then, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best …. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

…“The wall is symbolic,” said Josiah Heyman, director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies and a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso, which sits just across the border from the Mexican city of Juárez. “It’s the United States turning its back on Mexico. I think that could erode the good relationships that we’ve built with Mexican students and with Mexican scholars.”

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