Letter to Governor McMaster about International Travel and Visitors
- Aug 27
- 3 min read
Dear Governor McMaster:
The South Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors is very concerned about your Executive Order No. 2026-14, which establishes the South Carolina Foreign Visitor and Foreign Travel Programs.
Under these programs, all foreign visitors to South Carolina’s 13 state colleges and universities must be reported to State Law Enforcement Division’s Fusion Center (SLED FC) at least 30 days in advance. Similarly, college and university faculty traveling out of the country on official business must communicate their plans to SLED FC at least 30 days in advance.
While we recognize that travel to certain countries can be dangerous to the traveler and perhaps present national security threats, and that some university research may have national security implications, the blanket policy implemented by Executive Order No. 2026-14 casts a broad net regarding any sort of travel to and from any nation around the world, regardless of the conditions in that nation, its current relationship to the United States, or the purpose of the travel.
Moreover, the University of South Carolina and Clemson University have already implemented systems for supporting foreign security awareness by covered university personnel to properly safeguard U.S. government-funded research information. Offices of Research Security at both universities fulfill federal requirements, and their international travel programs are integrated with the universities’ travel request and approval processes so that they do not place additional burdens on faculty travel for academic, research and other appropriate purposes.
The South Carolina Foreign Visitor and Foreign Travel Programs would place additional, unnecessary and duplicative burdens on faculty who often travel abroad to conduct research and attend academic and professional conferences, and who collaborate with and host foreign academics. The programs could limit South Carolina students’ opportunities to learn from world-leading specialists in their fields. They might also impede programs in which faculty conduct and participate in study abroad programs for South Carolina students.
The programs will also place undue burdens on SLED, which will now be tasked with keeping abreast of developments and the situations in almost 200 nations worldwide. While SLED must of course remain cognizant of threats to South Carolina posed by foreign governments and actors, concerns about national security and illicit transfer of technology and intelligence are best left to the federal government entities equipped to handle and evaluate these concerns, including the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Foreign Travel Program also provides that travelers may be required to schedule a debriefing with SLED FC upon return from foreign travel. While the Executive Order provides that this debrief “will be solely related to safety and security issues or concerns that the traveler may have encountered during the foreign travel,” it will be difficult if not impossible to ensure that the questioning will not veer into examinations of the work and activities undertaken by the travelers while abroad. Such questioning is thus likely to raise concerns under the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech and association under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Because of these concerns, we urge that the South Carolina Foreign Visitor and Travel Programs be subsumed into universities’ existing research security programs. We also urge that the programs be scaled back to apply to only those nations that the federal government has deemed to present true economic, military and political threats.
Executive Council
South Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-SC)
