Message from the Dean Regarding Recent Update to DHS/SVEP Guidelines

To the SAIS community:

As you are all aware, this week, we were notified of the update to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) guidelines affecting students in the US under the F1 and M1 visa status. Following up on the message from President Daniels, I want to underscore that we consider these new guidelines deeply misguided, and deplore in no uncertain terms the tremendous negative impact on the lives of our students and their families, as well as on those of many others across the country. Our international students are an integral part of what makes SAIS the institution of which we are all proud, and we stand with them and by them. The safety and well-being of all of our students, faculty, and staff remains our highest priority.

I would like to address specifically our students directly affected by the SEVP guidelines: we are committed to working with you to ensure that the requirements for maintaining your immigration status are met. The fact that SAIS had already planned to have in-person options available in the Fall puts us in a different position relative to some of our peer institutions, and we are working closely with the University to clarify the full range of options that are available under the new guidelines. We are hopeful that we will be able to navigate them properly to that end. 

Still, none of this changes the fact that the new regulations are fundamentally unjust, and betray a disregard for the negative impact on people’s lives. They mean, for instance, that students are cruelly exposed to the threat that, if the public health situation deteriorates to the point of requiring a physical shutdown of the campus, as was the case in the Spring, they may be forced to leave the country under dire circumstances. We stand firmly against this, and will work with the University, to the best of our collective abilities, to push for change towards an appropriate regulatory environment that rightly balances the considerations of public health, education, and basic humanity.

Sincerely,


Eliot A. Cohen
Dean