The conservative-leaning National Association of Scholars said the impact of the order is “trivial.” The association’s president, Peter Wood, said in response to a request for comment that it encourages debate over the issue and not unanimous opposition:

We fear that the academic opposition to President Trump's executive order stems more from reflexive opposition to anything the President does than from thoughtful consideration of the issue, and we fear that progressive censorship of dissenting voices will now spread to include censorship of any student, professor, or visiting speaker who voices support of President Trump's executive order. Academia ought to be presumptively open to the expression of such arguments.

To Keshavarz, efforts to cast the ban as a security issue or minimize its significance don’t make sense. By allowing students of different cultures and religions to study with scholars in the U.S., she said, universities accomplish their educational mission of fostering open and lively discussion and teaching students about the world. “I believe a lot of our safety depends on learning these things,” she said. Keshavarz said her department is currently considering an Iranian Ph.D. candidate for the comparative-literature program. “I no longer know where that situation is,” she said, in reference to the student’s application.

Schools across the country have current students who are worried they won’t be allowed back into the U.S. if they leave, prospective students who may not be allowed in at all, and faculty who are from the banned countries and fear they will be denied re-entry if they try to visit sick family members or relatives outside the country. A Sudanese student with a green card who attends Stanford University was reportedly detained and handcuffed at an airport in New York over the weekend. “This is what causes, in my opinion, a lot of disconnect, a lot of anger, a lot of discomfort, and once you lose your dignity, you’re so much closer to being a bad person. It’s just...it’s kind of an injury.”

Joanna Regulska, the vice provost and associate chancellor for Global Affairs at U.C. Davis, was part of a delegation of academics to Iran several years ago. At the time, professors in both places were hopeful that more cross-cultural exchange would be possible. (The U.S. does not currently send students to study in Iran.). Now, those hopes seem distant. For now, the more immediate worry is what happens to the several post-doctoral students from banned countries who are on fellowships at Davis.

Regulska, who is originally from Poland, said that schools stand to be affected financially, as foreign students typically pay out-of-state tuition at the nation’s public colleges. Academically, losing contact with certain regions could limit the production of new knowledge, she worries. And, finally, she said, “there’s this sort of isolation in terms of the cultural context and that has implications for cultural understanding.” Not every U.S. student has the time or ability to go abroad (only around 10 percent currently do), and bringing a variety of foreign students to campuses allows them to gain cultural and religious understanding without moving physically, she said.