Finally the ideals of the "academic freedom" movement and the dreaded T-word have come together
in one disgraceful package.
Dora María Téllez has been prevented from teaching at Harvard because she is considered to have taken part in "terrorist acts" - the Sandinistas' overthrow of the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
Ms Téllez was due to take up the post of Robert F Kennedy visiting professor of Latin American Studies at Harvard this spring when she was told that she would not be allowed to enter the country.
She has visited the US on many occasions in her profession as a historian. The decision to ban her appears to have been taken in response to the new national "anti-terror" policies.
There are a few articles on this (just GoogleNews her name, sans accents) - they've apparently been dribbling out for the past month or so. A few even bring up Negroponte's appointment (which apparently occurred around the same time) and his Nicaraguan connections.
One thing that most of the articles I could find did seem to agree on is that the US would do little more than mention that she participated in "terrorist acts." No specifics, of course; that's so pre-9/11.
I'll leave y'all with my favorite quote from any of the articles:
Protesters include Gioconda Belli, a Los Angeles-based Nicaraguan writer who was also a Sandinista, who said: "It is absurd. Dora Maria is an outstanding woman who fought against a dictatorship. If fighting against tyranny is 'terrorism' how does the United States justify the invasion of Iraq? It is an insult."