Visiting English professor John McCourt has followed James Joyce's trail around the world.
Like Joyce, McCourt is from Dublin, Ireland, and moved to Trieste, Italy. And like Joyce, McCourt -- an internationally renowned Joyce scholar -- has been thrown into a jail cell upon entering a new country.
While Joyce was imprisoned after encountering some rowdy sailors, McCourt encountered what he described as heavy-handed treatment at customs upon arriving at the Philadelphia International Airport last month.
Though officials at Penn's Office of International Programs described the incident as "unusual treatment," they say it represents a trend of increasing difficulties for international faculty and students when traveling to the United States.
While McCourt simply forgot to bring a J-1 visa -- an error that can be fixed by paying a $265 fine -- he said a customs officer told him that "university professors don't make mistakes like this."
The officer handcuffed McCourt and sent him to Montgomery County Jail, where he spent the night in a cell, McCourt said.
He was sent back to Italy the following day but made it to Penn within a week, he said.
International student and scholar adviser Sheila Gaarder said that visiting professors who lack documentation generally encounter "more of an inconvenience than anything."
This was "an unusual incident," said Gaarder, who works for the Office of International Programs.
McCourt agrees that his case wasn't the norm.
"I just think that I was the wrong person on the wrong day," McCourt said.
However, he added that rough treatment at customs has led to a "growing reluctance to come to America" from within the academic community.
Gaarder said, though, that numbers of visiting professors have remained steady over the past few years at Penn. While an Institute of International Education study showed that international student enrollment in American universities declined 3.6 percent from the 2002-03 school year to last year's, the number of international applications for the Class of 2010 at Penn increased by 11 percent over the previous year.
Gaarder added that Penn is lodging a formal complaint with the State Department. While department spokespeople didn't immediately return calls for comment, Kelly Klundt, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection told The New York Times in an article published Feb. 10 that "there are unfortunately going to be a few instances [like McCourt's] that do not demonstrate perfect discretion."
English Department Chairman Jim English said that McCourt's experience is the first incident affecting a visiting literature scholar he is aware of.
However, he added that hostility toward foreigners is having a "dire impact on our higher educational system."
Visiting students, too, have faced similar treatment at border control.
Santiago Massons, an exchange student from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain -- who arrived in Philadelphia the day before McCourt did -- said that the treatment he receives at airports is "inconvenient and annoying."
While McCourt said he is having a "wonderful" time at Penn, his experience at the airport was a sobering one.
It's "actually a very frightening experience when your freedom is taken away," he said.
