As an Appeals Court readies to hear a challenge to the exclusion of Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan from the U.S., PEN and fifty-nine other organizations have written the Obama administration in an effort to curtail the practice of denying visitation rights to foreign writers, intellectuals, and activists based on their political beliefs. In 2004 Ramadan was forced to resign his position as Professor of Islamic Studies in the Classics Department and Luce Professor of Religion Conflict and Peacebuilding at Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame following the revocation of his visa. The letter calls on Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to abandon ideological exclusion and holds that the practice violates the American public’s First Amendment rights to engage with a full range of information and ideas. Under this provision, writers such as Gabriel García Marquez, Mahmoud Darwish, Pablo Neruda, and Doris Lessing have been denied entry into the United States.