Karl-Dietrich Wolff, a former student activist and German publisher, was denied entry into the US at JFK International Airport this weekend, according to British newspaper The Guardian. Wolff was set to attend and speak at the conference, “African American Civil Rights and Germany in the 20th Century”, October 1-4 at Vassar College.
Other speakers are to include members of the Vassar community and international activists and educators related with the history of African Americans in Germany, including Associate Professor of History Maria Hoehn and Angela Davis of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Wolff spoke to The Guardian and said that as he went through customs, “They filtered me out of the line right away. They had a print-out which had my picture from my visa [saying] in big spelling ‘revoked, revoked, revoked’. They told me I was trying to enter the country with an invalid visa.”
Wolff was under the impression that his Visa was valid until November 2010, but found out that the US had considered his Visa revoked as of 2003. According to The Guardian, he was questioned for six hours, during which his fingerprints and photograph were taken, and then sent back to Frankfurt.
Wolff, now 66 years old, became involved in the civil rights movement when he visited the United States as a high school exchange student in the 1960’s. Since then, Wolff has served as the head of the Socialist German Students’ Organization and in 1969 founded Germany’s Black Panther Solidarity Committee.
Many international civil and human rights organizations have spoken out against the United States’ treatment of Wolff, including PEN, the international writer’s organization, who has condemned his denial of entry and said the actions of the US are “outrageous and must be interpreted as a curtailment of human rights”.
President Hill issued a statement expressing her disappointment in the decision to deny Wolff entry and said that at the conference she had hoped that Wolff could “share his biographical experience with the international academic community.”
Speaking about the conference and his ability attend, Wolff stated to The Guardian that he will not return to the US without a letter of apology, and that “the University is trying to get some video conferencing going so I can speak at the conference after all.”
