Science not yet without borders

Abstract

We share the vision Barry Sanders outlined in his Opinion piece “Science Without Borders.” However, we were saddened by the obvious failure of the 2007 International Iran Conference on Quantum Information to live up to that vision, as attested by the barring of Israeli scientists from the conference. What disturbed us even more was that the “unfortunate” barring of Israelis did not seem to influence either the running of the conference or Sanders’s up-beat report.Did the organizers of the conference—including Sanders—try to get permission for Israeli scientists to attend? Did they protest to the Iranian government in the (obvious) case of refusal? Was the issue brought up during the conference, in the framework of the reported “lively and unconstrained” discussions?As much as Sanders wanted to keep politics out of the conference, it did enter in the form of the Iranian government’s control over who could attend and who was excluded. It reminds us of the story of the gorilla parked in the middle of a cocktail party, whom everybody is conscientiously ignoring while carrying on a spirited conversation. In fact, we imagined adding “Find the missing Israeli scientists” to the caption with the picture of conference attendees on coffee break.According to Sanders, another International Iran Conference on Quantum Information is planned for 2009. Will Israeli scientists be allowed to attend that conference as equals with the Australians, Canadians, French, and Japanese and have the conference live up to the ideals of “science without borders”? What are the organizers doing today to make that happen in 2009, or will the political and exclusionist gorilla again sit in the middle of the party? In our opinion, Sanders should “walk his talk” and tell his Iranian hosts that as much as he wants to help Iranian scientists and students, it will not happen a second time at the price of sacrificing scientific freedom.© 2008 American Institute of Physics.