Australian academics refuse to attend US conferences for fear of being detained

When Gemma Lucy Smart received an invitation to attend an academic conference in the US, she was excited. But that was before Donald Trump was returned to office.Now Smart, who has a disability and is queer, has decided it’s too risky to travel to Seattle for the social sciences conference in September.The disabilities officer at the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations and a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney will instead attend remotely.Shortly after Trump was inaugurated, the Society for Social Studies of Science made its conference “hybrid” in response to what it said were “unpredictable” developments at the US border.“They were concerned about people entering,” Smart said.What Australians flying to the US need to know about phone and device searches at the borderRead more“I work on the history of psychiatry, so my field has a lot to do with diversity, equity and inclusion. They [the conference organisers] very explicitly said, ‘We don’t believe it is safe for eve...