The Community College Humanities Association’s Statement on President Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration

The Community College Humanities Association (CCHA), representing community college humanities faculty across the United States, is deeply concerned about the implicit and explicit consequences of President Trump’s Executive Order that restricts the free movement of immigrants and predominantly Muslim refugees from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen into the United States.

The CCHA Board of Directors and staff fully support Article 13(2) of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country,” and in the U.N.’s “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family,” and that this “is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” the ideals on which American democracy is founded and operates.

The President’s E.O. disrupts students and faculty who attend and teach college in the U.S. It also runs counter to the core principles of humanism, upsets the value and promise of human relationships, and disfavors the integrity of what we, as humanities faculty through the critical engagement of literature, history, philosophy, religious studies, foreign languages and cultures, seek to instill in all our students, a significant and increasing number of which come from countries other than the United States.

The CCHA stands for the fair treatment of any group regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. The CCHA also believes, as the U.N. declaration claims, that “disregard and contempt for human rights [is more likely to result] in barbarous acts which [will outrage] the conscience of mankind,” and that we call on the president to rescind this E.O., continue within the former framework to guard against terrorism, and welcome those who have already been vetted as well as honor the requests of those who are seeking freedom from persecution.