Iranian dissident, a Duke professor, rushes return to U.S. in fear of another travel ban

Iranian dissident Mohsen Kadivar had begun what he expected would be a semester-long fellowship at Berlin’s Wissenschaftskolleg to work on a book. Instead, he returned to the United States on February 16.

Kadivar, a research professor in Duke University’s Department of Religious Studies, is a permanent resident of the United States. But immigration lawyers and Duke University administrators advised him to return in anticipation of another executive order barring travel for nationals of Iran and several other predominantly Muslim countries.

Duke joined 16 other schools in mid-February in a friend-of-the-court brief that calls the travel ban “unauthorized by statute and contrary to law.”