Editors Note: This piece is the full text of a letter sent by Momodou Taal to the Cornell Office of Global Learning on Sept. 26 to help appeal his suspension. Taal was suspended for violating campus free-expression policies at a human capital career fair.
Dear Global Learning:
I am writing to request help from your office in preventing the pre-mature suspension of my F-1 visa without due process of law. I am asking that you serve as my advocate and not as my adversary to help me have a chance to explain my side of the story before the university revokes my visa, informs DHS and forces me to leave the country and my community here at Cornell.
For this reason I am requesting that Global Learning center lobby the administration to give me a hearing over my suspension before it refers me to DHS. I am confident that the evidence and eye-witness testimony will show that I was not violating community policies, that I was merely engaging in protected free speech activity, that the administration made representations to me indicating that past infractions for free speech would not restrain me from expressing my views about the genocide in Gaza, and that I left Statler on September 18 as soon as I saw things were getting tense. Give me the chance to explain myself before I have to flee the country.
I am asking for your help because the Global Learning Center is supposed to support me rather than fight me. The Global Learning website says the purpose of its international services is to “help students and scholars from 116 countries thrive at Cornell.” The website has an entire section titled “supporting scholars under threat” and says that “since 2016 Global Cornell has led campus and community support for international scholars, students, and human rights defenders whose work puts them at risk in their home countries.”
I am a scholar, and I am under threat here in America because I am defending the basic human rights of the people of Palestine while participating in peaceful protests on a university campus. I have a valid visa. I have a right to be at Cornell and I have a right to express myself.
Please do not refer me to DHS until I’ve had a fair chance to a hearing.
Thank you,
Kind regards,
Momodou Taal
Momodou Taal is a Ph.D. candidate in Africana Studies at Cornell and a leader for the Coalition for Mutual Liberation. He was suspended this Monday for involvement in an on-campus protest.