UMass Amherst bans Iranian nationals from taking certain science subjects

[bedstuy]

No, I think it makes sense.  What exactly is the problem?

[bedstuy]

No, I think it makes sense.  What exactly is the problem?

Maybe if you believe that all Iranian students will work for the government to make WMDs, sure it makes  sense in that twisted world.

It's completely unreasonable and arbitrary discrimination based on nationality, motivated by political paranoia that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon (which, by the way, is most likely not their goal).

Hopefully it gets struck down or reversed, because this is pretty stupid.

It's not arbitrary and we do discriminate against certain nations.  We don't sell Iran weapons.  We don't hire Iranian nationals to work at Lockheed Martin.  It's part of our sanctions regime for Iran and it makes sense to guard our technology.

I think from the University's perspective, they want to protect themselves.  They don't want an Iranian graduate students even accidentally doing defense related research.  That's illegal and they could face fines and jail time if it does.

[bedstuy]

No, I think it makes sense.  What exactly is the problem?

Maybe if you believe that all Iranian students will work for the government to make WMDs, sure it makes  sense in that twisted world.

It's completely unreasonable and arbitrary discrimination based on nationality, motivated by political paranoia that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon (which, by the way, is most likely not their goal).

Hopefully it gets struck down or reversed, because this is pretty stupid.

It's not arbitrary and we do discriminate against certain nations.  We don't sell Iran weapons.  We don't hire Iranian nationals to work at Lockheed Martin.  It's part of our sanctions regime for Iran and it makes sense to guard our technology.

Yes it is arbitrary, because it's just a blanket ban rather than going on a case-by-case basis (as what was previously used, noted in the article). The aforementioned subjects that they are banned from are incredibly broad that could cover a vast range of careers, nuclear weapons technology being a tiny and loosely-related part of many of these careers. This is completely unnecessary discrimination.

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Oh, I'm sure there are ample opportunities for students to "accidentally" engage in defense-related research in subjects like physics, chemistry, and computers

Yes.  The University needs to coordinate that with their lawyers.  Right?  It's very serious, professors can go to jail for allowing foreign nationals to have access to their research.  Computers can involve cryptography, chemistry can involve chemical weapons and physics can involve nuclear technology.