Let Our Colleague Eyal Weizman In!

Let Our Colleague Eyal Weizman In!

Architect and Human Rights advocate Eyal Weizman should not be barred from entering the United States - Sign the Petition! http://chng.it/L9mLnC92

We – architects, urbanists, planners, academics, and activists – are disgusted by the decision of the United States government to refuse – without explanation -  Professor Eyal Weizman’s entry into the county attend the opening of a show of the work of the Forensic Architecture group at the Miami Dade Museum of Art and Design, an action that Amnesty USA has described as “outrageous.”  Weizman founded Forensic Architecture in 2010 and continues to direct it at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and a renowned teacher.  He has taught and lectured at numerous institutions around the world, including U.S. universities such as Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale and is a prolific, original, and incisive writer and researcher and a leading voice for social justice both in our community and in the wider world.  His collaboration last year with The New York Times on “One Building, One Bomb”, a reconstruction of a chemical attack on civilians by the Syrian government, won an Emmy Award.

The work of Eyal Weizman has had a profound impact, not simply on us as individuals but on the very concept of the social character of space: he has truly changed the parameters of our professions.  Indeed, he is among the most widely – and globally - respected and innovative thinkers and advocates for architectures of justice and human rights. The scientific precision of his analysis of architectural and urban “events” is as compelling as it is original.  This is not something only recognized by his fellow professionals but by many international organizations, including the British Academy, which elected him Fellow this year, and by his receipt of an MBE, in this new year’s Queen’s honors list.

Eyal Weizman stands for everything we believe in and has moved mountains to make the world a more ethical place.  We protest the absurdity and obvious hostility of the cancellation of his visa waiver for the U.S.  where – especially now – he has so much to teach.  We cannot avoid seeing the totalitarian, indeed Kafka-esque, style of this refusal – you can’t come in and we won’t tell you why – as part of a larger project to stifle progressive and dissenting voices, and to close our borders ever more tightly against those who do not agree with the jingoistic, reactionary, and racist immigration policies of the Trump regime.  Perhaps even more sinister is the truly horrifying excuse that this decision was made not by any directly human agency but by an “algorithm.”

We demand that Eyal Weizman be admitted to the U.S. without delay and with apologies from the government for the grave insult directed at him, and for the embarrassment to all Americans who believe in free speech and movement and in treating accomplishment with respect.

Petition Drafted by Architects, Designer, and Planners for Social Responsibility and Planners Network and supported by the undersigned individuals (institutional affiliation for identification only.