The Excluded: Ideological Exclusion and the War on Ideas

During the Cold War, the U.S. government routinely denied visas to foreign scholars, writers, and artists who were thought to hold leftist political views. The practice—sometimes called “ideological exclusion”—is inconsistent with the most fundamental American values, and Congress rightly put an end to it in 1990. But now our government is at it again, excluding foreigners whose only fault is holding political views that the Bush administration disfavors. The practice is unfair to those who are barred from the country and it violates the First Amendment rights of the Americans who want to meet with them. In this report, we profile some of the men and women who have been excluded.