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

[Yao Li]

>
> 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?

There have been students' visas being revoked and there have recently been
a lot of uncertainties regarding H1B, which a number of faculties and
industrial workers are using. So there are *at least *a lot more
uncertainties for international scholars to travel outside the U.S.

In any case, I don't think the real argument should be about people outside
the U.S. vs. people stuck in the U.S. Like others suggest, we should try to
hear from the entire community (rather than just TYPES forum) and look for
other creative and constructive ways to support everyone in the community.


On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 1:58 PM Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com>
wrote:

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list 
> ]
>
> 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.
>