TEHRAN -- The Organization Committee of the Eighth Biennial Conference of Association of the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS) is forced to cancel the conference after the U.S. president Donald Trump’s travel ban. 

“As the American scholars constituted the bulk of non-Iranian attendees at the conference due in Shiraz on March 3 to 9, we are forced to cancel it at this late stage and after many participants had already made travel arrangements,” Saeid Amir Arjomand, the President of the association has announced on the ASPS website.

On January 27, 2017, Trump issued a 90-day ban on all entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries including Iran, and in a measure-for-measure response to Trump’s executive order, Iran announced on January 28 that it would no longer issue any visas to American citizens for an initial period of 90 days and beyond it as long as the U.S. ban remains in effect.

“Forty-five scholars due to attend the conference are holding U.S. passports and in accordance with the instructions, Iran’s Foreign Ministry refused to consider the visa applications,” Arjomand said.

“Some 150 scholars from 22 countries other than Iran and the United States, namely Japan, Australia, China, India, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Russia, Bosnia, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and the United Kingdom are adversely affected and greatly inconvenienced by this late cancellation,” he remarked 
 
“We deeply regret this ill-conceived and abruptly- and inhumanely-executed measure by the Trump administration, and consider it a flagrant violation of due process of law. We further hold the administration fully responsible for the great damage the presidential executive order has caused to the international dissemination of higher learning and global culture and the harm it has inflicted upon the international scholarly community,” Arjomand stated.

The ASPS is an international scholarly association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the Persianate world from the Caucasus to India and Central Asia, and publishes the Journal of Persianate Studies. It is registered in the State of New York and has a license from the Office of the Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of Treasury (License N. IA-2016-332302-1) for its operations and cultural activities in Iran.

RM/YAW