Chemical society reinstates ousted Iranian members

Last December the American Chemical Society rescinded the memberships of 36 scientists in Iran and 1 in Sudan, claiming the move was necessary to adhere to US law. In mid-April the society applied to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for a license to provide membership services to scientists in countries under trade sanctions. Then, in a turnaround, ACS sent a letter in mid-May to the ousted scientists welcoming them back as members.

In a widely circulated letter dated 30 April, ACS executive director and CEO Madeleine Jacobs explains that lawyers reviewed OFAC regulations and consulted with OFAC before advising ACS that providing membership services to sanctioned countries violates US law. Surprisingly, Jacobs says she learned about the expulsions from a 30 March report in Science. “We had a serious breakdown in communications,” she writes.

Some ACS members and members of other professional societies were upset that the Iranians were expelled and that Jacobs did not immediately reverse the decision. “Alot of people are getting a lot of letters and e-mails about this, from people in the US and outside,” Zafra Lerman, chair of ACs’s subcommittee on scientific freedom and human rights, said before the reversal was announced. They are asking, she added, why, if the government did not come to ACS, is ACS taking and standing by this preemptive action? Indeed, OFAC spokesperson Molly Millerwise said, “There hasn’t been a new restriction announced by OFAC … [but] guidance can be open to interpretation.”

Hamid Javadi, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and president of the Iranian-American Physicists Network Group, said, “We are worried that the action by ACS may force other scientific organizations to follow suit.” Expelling people “is wrong,” he added. “It dismisses the most scientifically educated, independent, critical thinking, and open-minded members of Iran as US OFAC tries to contain the Iranian government.”

Other scientific organizations kept an eye on the matter. But Cecelia Jankowski, managing director of regional activities for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers—which was at the center of an earlier publishing battle with OFAC (see Physics Today, May 2004, page 28 )—said, “We have not seen anything new from OFAC related to membership activities in the past couple of years.” Added American Physical Society associate executive officer Alan Chodos, “APS is not planning to do anything similar to what ACS did.” Both IEEE and APS have members in Iran.

In her 30 April letter, it seemed Jacobs was not changing the ACs’s course of action. But on 11 May, ACS reinstated the 14 ousted Iranian scientists who had been paid-up members. “To express our regret over the disruption of your membership, we are reinstating your ACS membership, and your ACS membership dues for the next 12 months are being paid for you,” the society wrote to the former members. The other 22, and the scientist in Sudan, can renew their memberships.

The letter—which ACS officials declined to share, but which was disclosed to Physics Today by another source—goes on to say that the reinstatement follows additional contact with OFAC “and our own rigorous review of federal requirements.” As for the license application ACS submitted to OFAC, it’s still pending, says Jacobs. She adds that ACS “is planning to work with the National Academy of Sciences and other scientific societies to get OFAC to clarify what is and isn’t allowed in terms of scientific membership services.”

“I can’t believe it took so long,” Lerman says. “But what ACS did is the right thing. And I am very happy with the solution.”