Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Published online 7 January 2009 | Nature 457, 140 (2009) | doi:10.1038/457140c
News in Brief
US National Academies suspend visits to Iran
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
I do not know the context or accusations made against Mr. Schweitzer but as I look at his research he seems to have worked on modern terrorism which seems like a buzz word for Iranian officials. I am not giving the officials any credibility for what they did but I know of many other leading American scientists (including Jared Cohen and Graham Allison) who have recently traveled to Iran with no problems. It is worth noting that Iranian scientists have a hard time working on subjects of their Interest. The news of Iranian scientists being expelled from CERN was published in this very same website. I believe an Iranian scientist working on the very same topic as Mr. Schweitzer in the US would suffer far worse consequences and would have a very hard intellectual life. I think as scientists, we should focus on academic freedom and promote it. Be it Islamic Republic of Iran or United States of America, a scientist must be free to conduct the research s/he is willing - regardless of race or nationality.