Open The Gates

This summer, I shall renounce 02138 and return to my home city: Jakarta, Indonesia. The city is exhilarating and alive, damp and disgusting, and I cannot wait to return. It is home to 9.5 million people (officially) and doesn’t come close to anything in North America. Sadly, however, you, my Harvard peer, will not be visiting me anytime soon, not even on the way to study abroad.

Harvard will not sanction education programs in places like Jakarta due to U.S. State Department travel warnings. What a pity this is! Because of a self-harming, unnecessary, and contradictory policy, your education and the future of my country will be compromised. To speak the language of University President Lawrence H. Summers, this is an embargo on interaction with the ideas of other parts of the world, and as in most embargoes, everybody loses.

Harvard’s travel policy is especially harmful in the case of Indonesia, which is the fourth most populated country on earth, as well as the world’s largest Muslim country and a moderate Muslim democracy (yes, they do exist). Harvard students can only stand to benefit from interaction with a unique country such as mine. Removing barriers to interaction would also be good for Indonesia, for the influx of brains into the country would do it some good; the extracurricular and intellectual tartness of Harvard students will certainly find a way to contribute to any place that is fortunate enough to have them. Furthermore, if every university did what Harvard has done, Indonesia would be deprived of the necessary intellectual interaction that stimulates the growth of its fledgling civil society.

I understand that we wish to protect our students, but some of the places embargoed are simply not all that dangerous. For example, it does not make sense to ban students from all 2 million square kilometers of Indonesian territory. Obviously, there are safe places and there are less safe places; it’s a big country. How unfair and unnecessary it would be to simply lump everything together.

Most damningly, these travel restrictions are inconsistent and contradictory. For one thing, they emphasize political crime above overall crime. So while according to one set of statistics, you are 19 times more likely to get murdered in Moscow than in Jakarta, the college sanctions three study abroad programs in the Russian capital. But even if we measure only political violence, how can we sanction travel to Spain—which has suffered a massive deadly political attack in the last year—but not to Jakarta, which has experienced no acts of terrorism in the same time-frame? Harvard claims commitment to broadening the international experience of her students, but the gap between administration rhetoric and policy could not be more apparent.

The solution is not to allow travel everywhere and anywhere. Rather, it is to evaluate student requests on a case-by-case basis. Decisions would thoughtfully balance out personal circumstances, geographic diversity, and academic intentions. This is what Yale and New York University have sensibly done. It is what we should do. So bon voyage, I hope to see you traveling soon. Perhaps even to Indonesia.

Sahil K. Mahtani '08, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Lionel Hall.