U.S. Officially Awards Hollman Morris a Visa

UPDATED 10:03 a.m.

Hollman Morris Rincon, a Colombian journalist who was originally denied his student visa to the United States last month, officially received his visa Tuesday morning.

The Nieman Fellow for the class of 2010-2011 will be free to travel to the United States and study at the foundation for journalists, according to an announcement made by the Nieman Foundation.

Robert H. Giles, curator of the Foundation, said that he was delighted at the news when he received a phone call from Morris in Bogota this morning at about 11:15 a.m. The acclaimed human rights reporter and producer of an independent television news program had been denied a student visa by the Department of State on "security-related grounds."

“I think this is an aspiring example of a large community of individuals and organizations working to get the right thing done,” Giles told The Crimson in an interview Tuesday afternoon.

A reporter known for his critical coverage of Colombia President Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s administration, Morris developed connections with sources who did not support the outgoing president.

For the past few weeks, Giles worked with several journalism and human rights organizations to lobby for the investigative reporter.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, the Human Rights Watch, and the Committee to Protect Journalists are other organizations participating in the fight against the denial of Morris’ entry into the United States. Thirty-one faculty members at the University of Texas, Austin wrote a letter to Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg, and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expansion called for Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton to take action.

Nieman Fellows from the class of 1988 even showed their support for Morris by sending e-mails to Juan Manuel Santos, who recently won the presidency of Colombia in a landslide election and had previously served as the finance minister under Uribe. Santos was a 1988 Nieman Fellow and the sub-director of his family-owned newspaper El Tiempo, which has the largest circulation in the country.

“I’m delighted to hear that justice has been made, and the State Department corrected this absurd mistake,” said Rosental C. Alves, a Fellow in Santos’ Nieman class. He added that his own Nieman experience was a “watershed” in his life and career, as it will be for Morris—especially after he returns to his newsroom and his country after the year of study.

The Nieman Fellowship Program is a mid-career program for journalists on the domestic and international field. Each year, at least 12 U.S. and 12 international journalists are selected to attend the year-long program at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

—Staff writer Xi Yu can be reached at xyu@college.harvard.edu.

—Check TheCrimson.com for more updates.