The 25,000-member American Educational Research Association has joined the growing list of organizations vowing to boycott Arizona in protest of its new immigration law.
At its annual meeting here in Denver, the group’s governing council approved a resolution on Friday declaring that it will no longer hold meetings in the state until the law is rescinded.
“As education researchers, we need to be concerned about the effects this new law may have on fostering an environment of fear with consequences for students’ learning, educational achievement, and attachment to and belief in the social institutions of society,” said Kris Gutierrez, the group’s president-elect and a researcher from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The organization’s boycott resolution comes days after Denver Public Schools did much the same thing, banning its employees from attending any work-related conferences in Arizona. And on Saturday, thousands of Denver-area protesters marched from a local high school to the state Capitol, cutting a swath through the middle of the downtown area where AERA members were shuffling from hotel to hotel.
Even in an Ivory Tower, you can’t escape the politics of immigration.