About 250 Syracuse University faculty members have signed a new petition calling on Chancellor Kent Syverud to take a stance against President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration.

As of Monday evening, 244 members of the SU community — most of them faculty members — had signed the document, which has been circulating online. The petition states that the faculty members are “deeply disappointed” that Syverud hasn’t expressed a clear opposition to the executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. It also presses Syverud to “exemplify true moral leadership” not just as the head of the university but also as an educational leader in the Syracuse community, which houses many immigrants and refugees.

The petition is signed by both tenured and non-tenured faculty across SU’s different schools and colleges.

“We call on Chancellor Syverud to go beyond the embrace of our affected community members as ‘always Orange’,” the petition states. “… We urge him in the strongest possible terms to join his peers at other institutions in recognizing Trump’s Executive Order for what it is: unlawful in the eyes of countless legal experts and a direct threat to the core values of any university or open society.”

The petition points out that leaders at other universities, including the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, have expressed clear opposition to Trump’s ban. In statements, Syverud has expressed support for undocumented students and students affected by Trump’s ban, but he hasn’t explicitly opposed the ban itself.

“Our work and our contributions are made possible by people from everywhere, including the seven countries specifically identified in the executive orders,” Syverud said in a campus-wide email last week.

Trump signed the executive order on Jan. 27, preventing people from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the country for the next 90 days, and all refugee admissions for 120 days. This order also includes those who have student visas. As a direct consequence of the order, 50 SU students from the banned countries have been advised by the Slutzker Center for International Services not to travel out of the country because they wouldn’t be allowed to return.

Trump’s controversial executive order, however, is in limbo now after a federal judge in a district court in Seattle ordered on Friday to have the ban suspended. On Sunday, a federal appeals court rejected reinstating the restriction temporarily.

The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have halted the implementation of the ban.

SU’s Office of the General Counsel attorneys and Slutzker Center staff will be holding two open house sessions about immigration concerns on Tuesday.

Published on February 6, 2017 at 9:01 pm

Contact Satoshi: ssugiyam@syr.edu | @SatoshiJournal