[TYPES] Could we temporarily stop having conferences in the US?

[Gabriel Scherer]

Dear all,

First of all, let me note that I have been vague so far in my specific
sources of worry, because I unfortunately believe that it may be dangerous,
especially for people working in the US, to publicly voice certain
criticisms of the US government. I would rather not include precise
political commentaries on the current situation, because I worry that it
could make it unsafe for some of us. ("Ha, in the land of free speech,
people would not be suspended from their job for criticizing their
government, right?")

On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 9:02 PM Derek Dreyer <dreyer at mpi-sws.org> wrote:

> It would be helpful to know of concrete examples of academics who were
> harassed,
> mistreated, or detained by government officials when travelling to
> conferences in the US.  My impression is that there are extremely few such
> cases -- but I don't know.
>

There was a well-publicized case a few months ago of a French researcher
being refused entry due to, according to French authorities, the fact that
personal messages critical of the US administration had been found by US
custom agents on their laptop (
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained__;!!IBzWLUs!Xf7FbbuOZy9Eqpk_DDSpKATzblK_MVElz9bPql0UDtXItC9j4WJ7o20l5AR3qboVWkNJVekM1gK1yJmLsOGhheS3Ql9QKXWB1c1-Ew$ 
). There are also various cases of foreign *tourists* being locked up for
two weeks in ICE jails (eg.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/11/german-tourists-ordeal-reportedly-ending-returned-from-us-detention__;!!IBzWLUs!Xf7FbbuOZy9Eqpk_DDSpKATzblK_MVElz9bPql0UDtXItC9j4WJ7o20l5AR3qboVWkNJVekM1gK1yJmLsOGhheS3Ql9QKXUdzO5B5Q$ 
).

For me the obvious problem is that even though attending a conference in
the US *might* be safe today, we are talking about SIGPLAN conferences
committing to organizing conferences six months, one year, two years from
now, and *no one* knows how things will be at that point, and I don't think
that many people hope that they will improve. Things are going bad, and
moving fast. The amount of risk in inviting 400-plus foreign visitors to
travel to the US in a year is staggering, and personally I believe that the
people who are making this choice are irresponsible.

It is not reasonable to say at the same time "these are very slow
processes, we commit two years in advance, and we cannot possibly roll back
afterwards", and yet pick locations that have seen in the last couple years
their worst (relative) decline in press freedom, rule of law, institutional
respect for science and tolerance to foreigners in decades.


As I said, I think we as a community have to consider the needs of all PL
> researchers, including many non-US-citizen researchers working in the US
> for whom it would be a significant hardship if all conferences took place
> outside the US.
>

I feel truly sorry for the people being stuck in the US with single-entry
visas -- thanks Julia for bringing this much-needed angle to the
conversation. This is also not something new. (Did I miss something and is
there a specific reason why there would be more single-entry academics in
the current presidential term as before?) I would be happy to help
organizing the bi-location of certain events (as we have done in the past,
eg. MFPS 2022 was bi-located between Ithaca and Paris,
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cs.cornell.edu/mfps-2022/paris.md.html__;!!IBzWLUs!Xf7FbbuOZy9Eqpk_DDSpKATzblK_MVElz9bPql0UDtXItC9j4WJ7o20l5AR3qboVWkNJVekM1gK1yJmLsOGhheS3Ql9QKXVcWB5IDw$  ), and I encourage our
US colleagues to consider re-giving talks at international conferences (or
talks published in PACMPL without being able to attend a conference) at
local events. In March 2023, I also proposed that PACMPL runs a worldwide
online seminar, one hour once a week, to present PACMPL-published papers,
with priority given to authors who could not present in-person.

(Every time I've seen efforts to bi-localize an academic event, it has been
on the initiative of someone from outside the US. I find it unfortunate
that this comment about single-visa US workers is used in practice to keep
to the statu quo, and never in my limited experience to improve our
conference processes to make them more diverse, less absurdly expensive,
less environmentally-damaging, etc.)

But ultimately, I think that before any drastic
> changes are made, we will need input from the whole community, not just
> those who are vocal about it in one email thread.
>

For the record, I wrote a few days ago to the SIGPLAN chairs to surface a
suggestion I received off-list: to run a poll to understand/measure the
position of the wider community on this delicate question. SIGPLAN declined
this suggestion.