Nalini Ghuman, Musicologist, Visa Revoked, Cancels Talk at Bard Music Festival
American-trained academic unable to return to teaching post in California
By: Michael Miller - Aug 21, 2007
Given the developments in the cultural identities of nations formerly under British rule, especially India and Pakistan, Elgar's relation to the British Empire and its ideology, particularly through such explicit works as "The Crown of India," are of especially lively interest today. The young American-trained musicologist, Nalini Ghuman, a British subject, was to have discussed some of these sensitive, but hardly incendiary issues at the symposium held last Friday as part of the Festival, but she was unable to attend, because the US State Department revoked her visa. As a result she will also be unable to teach her courses at Mills College in Oakland, where she is an Assistant Professor.
This sort of bureaucratic harrassment of academics and other foreign nationals who work in the United States is a common occurrence, whether it concerns a figure like Tariq Ramadan, Lily Allen, an obscure student wishing to study in the United States, or Nalini Ghuman. Apart from any personal anguish caused by these circumstances, it is worth remembering that the many intellectual émigrés who were able to settle here in the 1930s transformed American cultural life, releasing it from an undeniable provincialism. It should be obvious that in today's world more than ever it is essential for the international flow of ideas to remain unobstructed, as Americans' understanding of the rest of the world becomes increasingly limited.
In any case, I found Dr. Ghuman's statement sufficiently eloquent to reprint here.
Nalini Ghuman's Statement
I am writing to you today from Hereford, just around the corner from Plas Gwyn, Elgar's former home. I deeply regret not being able to join you for this exciting festival: for the past year the US government has inexplicably excluded me from the US – the country I have lived, studied and worked in for the past decade. When returning to the Bay Area last August 8th, I was detained at San Francisco airport by officers who challenged whether I was the same individual who was photographed in my passport, revoked my valid visa, and denied me the right to return to my home, fiancé, and job as Assistant Professor of Music at Mills College in Oakland. The Provost of Mills College has urged the Department of State to "correct a grave error by restoring Dr. Ghuman's visa immediately so that she can return to her teaching position without further loss to her students and harm to her career as a scholar."
The Unites States Embassy in London has informed my Member of Parliament that they are convinced that this is a case of mistaken identity. The Embassy states that they are, however, finding it impossible to get through to the State Department and are "frustrated" by the lack of response from Washington. According to a recent communication received by Senator Richard Durbin, my visa is still "awaiting security clearance" at the Department of State in Washington, D.C.
This is not the first time that the US government has prevented me from presenting my professional work on Elgar: this happened at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in November 2006. In response, the Board of Directors of the AMS, the largest international association dealing with music as a branch of learning and scholarship, officially protested my exclusion to the Department of State. Yet I continue to prevented, without explanation, from entering the USA, in spite of ongoing efforts made by such professional organizations, by legislators both in the UK and the USA, and by thousands of concerned individuals who have lodged their protests with the US State Department.
Indeed, President Leon Botstein has written to Condoleezza Rice personally, urging her to clear up this injustice and re-issue my visa in time to allow me to participate in the Festival this weekend: "The building of barriers that prevent scholars and artists from abroad from participating and working in the United StatesÂ… is a poor policy and a harmful one," President Botstein wrote. "Not only has no explanation been given for the revoking of Dr Ghuman's visa, but no-one who knows her believes that she constitutes any sort of risk."
I would like to thank President Botstein, Professor Christopher Gibbs, and all at the Bard Festival for their efforts. May I also take this opportunity to thank Professor Byron Adams, who has been immensely supportive throughout this nightmarish ordeal.
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Bio
Nalini Ghuman is an Assistant Professor of Music at Mills College where she recently co-directed a fully-staged performance of Gustav Holst's Savitri. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley where she was a Fellow of the Townsend Center for the Humanities and was awarded an AMS 50 Alvin Johnson Dissertation Fellowship. She is currently preparing the book India in the English Musical Imagination, 1890-1940 for publication, and has chapters forthcoming in Elgar and His World, edited by Byron Adams (Princeton UP 2007) and Western Music and Race edited by Julie Brown (Cambridge UP 2007). She recently presented a program on Elgar and Englishness for BBC Radio 3's Elgar anniversary celebration and is currently preparing an article for the Elgar Society Journal.
Web: http://michaelmiller.goodletters.net
e-mail: heliagoras@gmail.com