The Times Higher Education Supplement

Early in 2004, Dora Maria Tellez, a heroine of Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution and now a professor of history, applied for a visa to study in the US in preparation to teach at one of that country's most prestigious academic institutions, Harvard University's Divinity School.

In January she was told by the US consul in Nicaragua that, under new provisions of the US immigration rules, her request for a visa had been denied. Only later did she discover that the provisions concerned people connected with terrorism.

"I have no idea why I've been labelled a terrorist and I really want an explanation," says 49-year-old Tellez by telephone from her home in Managua, Nicaragua.

A spokeswoman for the US State Department says that the agency can not comment on individual cases because they are confidential.

Tellez had planned to study at the University of San Diego to improve her English and prepare the subject matter she was to have taught from autumn, when she was due to take up her post as the Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor of Latin American studies.The appointment, a joint one with the David Rockefeller Center of Latin American Studies at Harvard University, involved teaching courses on religion and society.

Her two themes were to be the impact of the Sandinista revolution and a social history of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast.

Tellez has recently met with Nicaragua's foreign minister, and he agreed to write a letter asking for an explanation for the visa decision.

"The US Government says that this is a war on terrorism to the death, so I feel personally threatened when they qualify me as a terrorist," says Tellez, who teaches Central American history at the Managua-based Central American University.

The US has made its immigration system its first line of defence against foreign terrorist attacks. Tellez's case highlights the fact that there has been greater scrutiny of visas of all types since the events of 9/11.

Tellez has visited the US as a tourist in the past, but has not been back to the country since 2000.

She believes there is no hope that the US will change its mind over her visa application in the current climate.

A spokeswoman for Harvard's Divinity School says that it is likely there will be no guest lecturer for the autumn term, given the limited time the university has to find another professor.

The dean, William A. Graham, says the school is "disappointed" by the rejection of the visa. "We strongly support the free exchange of scholars and scholarship internationally." He adds that the school will help Tellez to gain a visa if she wants to teach at the university in future.

Her case is causing concern in some quarters over possible restrictions on academic freedom in the US and has reignited the old debate about who is deemed a terrorist and who a freedom fighter.

"This Administration is using the term terrorist for political opponents," says Tellez, who turned to history "because it seemed the only way to explain the condition of my country and what was occurring in the world".

She adds: "The relationship between the US and Nicaragua has always been one in which the US has had complete domination. To my mind, when the Sandinistas ruled, this was an exception to that history.

"It is ironic that the US is calling me a terrorist when the US Government supported the Contras against the Sandinista Government. There is a double morality at work here - the US says it wants to destroy all terrorism, but this same Government has supported terrorist groups. My case has nothing to do with national security."

Tellez was a leading figure in the Nicaraguan revolution that overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.

A self-described "combatant, political leader and guerrilla leader", as a 22-year-old she was one of 25 revolutionaries who dressed as waiters and took over the country's national assembly, drawing global attention to the struggle that was going on in the country.

She then led guerrillas to rise up in the city of Le"n, which is often referred to as the first real uprising of the revolution.

During the Eighties, she served as Minister for Health in the Sandinista Government and remains committed to her ideals. In the Nineties, Tellez helped found the Sandinista Renewal Movement political party and was subsequently elected president of the party.

Following the attacks of September 2001, observers have seen a number of cases similar to that of Tellez.

Last year, the US Government took the unprecedented step of denying visas to an entire delegation of Cuban scholars who had been invited to participate in the Latin American Studies Association congress in Las Vegas.

"The fact is that Cuban academics are government employees. They come as government officials, and we have a policy restricting travel by Cuban government officials. We think it's not consistent with our national interest," says Richard Boucher, a spokesman for the State Department, explaining the rejection of the 67 visas.

He adds: "As far as I'm aware, none of these individuals has distinguished him or herself for free thinking and for questioning anything the (Cuban) regime has said."

Last year, a Swiss national, Tariq Ramadan, was offered a post at the prestigious Notre Dame University to teach as the Henry R. Luce professor of religion, conflict and peace building. He had been named one of the 100 most important thinkers and scientists by Time magazine.

He is also the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, who helped to found the Muslim Brotherhood - one of the most influential radical Islamist groups - in Egypt in 1928.

With the work visa in place and just days before he and his family were set to leave for the US, the Department of Homeland Security revoked his visa in accord with a law denying entry to aliens who use a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity".

A spokesman adds that the decision was based on "public safety or national security interests".

"If the reason for keeping Tellez out does turn out to be for her political beliefs or past actions then, like the Ramadan case, this raises very serious questions about the Administration's decision to keep out individuals because of their expressed political ideas," says Jonathan Knight, who directs the programme for academic freedom and tenure with the American Association of University Professors.

He adds that the guidelines on denying people entry to the US on the basis that they "endorse or espouse" terrorist activity are so broad that they could encompass practically anything.

"From our perspective, we're not so concerned about the rights of the individual, but rather the rights of the public to have access to other ideas, other experiences and engage in debate with these different voices."

With the increased scrutiny of both foreign students and professors, says Knight, the AAUP is hearing of more and more people who are deciding to study or teach elsewhere.

Many of the post-1945 baby-boom generation will be hitting 60 this year. As part of my research on the Sixties, I am interviewing a sample of the generation that thought 30 was old and life after 40 unimaginable. All were students in the Sixties or early Seventies and were either involved in or sympathetic to the radical activities of that period.

Everyone I interviewed felt that "something special" happened in the Sixties: "You got a sense of things changing... you know... in terms of clothes and personal mores, the way things were being questioned."

Most participants came from middle-class homes, and several commented on the conservatism of their parents and on how higher education provided them the opportunity to escape it. David Milner, now a professor of psychology at Westminster University, says that in the mid-Sixties, when the fashion was for long hair and hippy clothes, his father accused him of appearing "effeminate": a fairly standard adult comment about the style of the time.

Two respondents from working-class backgrounds managed to enter higher education. Both felt restricted by the cultural conservatism of their parents but were influenced politically by the socialism of their respective fathers. Both sought new ways of expressing their socialism, preferring to express themselves within the emerging student movement to becoming activists in the "old Left" Labour Party. Each took time to adjust to university life. One was thrown out of university for taking part in a sit-in. The other worked as a university secretary and registered for a BA only when she was repeatedly told by several people that she was "as bright as the students".

Most interviewees related their personal conflicts and their "evolution"to the wider context of economic expansion and greater affluence that underpinned a generational cultural explosion. As one participant put it:

"In the Sixties and Seventies there was a collective sense of a whole generation being bound together."

The identity of higher education students became defined by a sense of belonging to a generation or an aspect of it rather than to their family.

This did not necessarily involve any formal decision to join in - the long hair, the hippy clothes, the music, the drugs, the counterculture were pervasive. Nevertheless, there were informal pressures to conform to nonconformity: not to be "turned on" was to be "square". Not everyone was "an original", but the feeling of originality was endemic.

Few interviewees were "joiners" of political groups, either. Most did not engage in traditional class politics despite their concern about inequality. The various campus Marxist groups were seen as too doctrinaire.

In practice, libertarianism triumphed over egalitarianism.

Marches, protests, ad hoc coalitions and sit-ins happened on such a regular basis that they seemed a normal part of life and students felt they were about to change the world. The timescale demanded for change tended to be immediate: "freedom now" was the iconic slogan. The need for a detailed long-term strategy tended to be overlooked.

If the Sixties student Left was thin on ideology, it was fertile in issues: nuclear disarmament; university bureaucracy; corporate corruption; the Vietnam War. In the Seventies, racism, women's rights, gay rights, the environment and global inequality came to the fore. The social movements associated with these are part of the long-term legacy of student radicalism.

The interviewees had different ways of coping with the move from radical student life to working life. Sue Sharpe, research associate at the Institute of Education, and Janet Holland, professor of social research at London South Bank University, were students at the London School of Economics in the Sixties. They found the feminist movement provided something close to a combination of a career and a way of life for them. It also helped them to distance themselves from what they saw as the chauvinism of Sixties radicalism. Holland adds that she has found it easier to make progress with her feminism than with her socialism.

Others also chose careers that were compatible with their principles. Roger Smith, a former student activist at Essex University, is now director of ADEPT, a community development agency. Quite simply, he says, he could not imagine working for the private sector so he put his entrepreneurial talents to public use. Several interviewees said they followed careers in higher education or other areas of the public sector as a way of squaring their values with the need to make a living. Some have paid a price in marginalised status and lower income as a result.

Several interviewees looked nostalgic when I mentioned participatory democracy: "That got lost somewhere" was one response. All were disillusioned with Tony Blair and saw much continuity between new Labour and Thatcherism. By the time Margaret Thatcher came to power, all the interviewees realised that the Sixties dream of a radically different society was over.

Chris Rojek, professor of sociology and culture at Nottingham Trent University, is, at 50, the youngest interviewee. He regards the emphasis on the cultural changes engendered by the Sixties as a conspicuous example of a long-term trend towards the individualisation and informalisation of society brought about by greater affluence and leisure. However, if liberal capitalism has increased many people's wealth, he and others regard it as manipulative of consumers and exploitative of the poor.

Opinions about contemporary youth are mixed but sympathetic. Students are perceived as more conformist, partly because of the way they are more controlled by government policy. They are typically in debt, frequently need to do paid work as well as study and often live with their parents.

The anti-globalisation movement, which many of today's students are part of, is positively seen as comparable to Sixties radicalism in its values and decentralised organisational style. But whether it is reformist or revolutionary was not raised as an issue.

Mike O'Donnell is a professor of sociology at Westminster University. He is giving a paper, Now We Are (Nearly) 60: Reflections of a Radical Generation, at the annual conference of the British Sociological Association, at York University (March 21-23).