The Freakonomics blog reports that the University of Texas has developed a policy of restricting travel to "dangerous" countries, based upon U.S. Department of State Travel Warnings. My first though about this was, "It will limit geographical knowledge by keeping geographers from learning about some of the most important places on the planet." Countries on the no-fly list include Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Israel, and northern Mexico. I feel like these regions of our planet are places that faculty and graduate students need to learn more about, not avoid. What do you think?
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It’s vitally important that people do travel and learn from other places. I would argue that much of the time the danger to wider society of not travelling can be worse than the danger of the individual journey.. we need exchanges of ideas, knowledge and understanding.
It’s also got to depend on the individual who is doing the travelling. Clearly the University of Texas is going to have students who have family and other links to many of these countries.. Some people also make better travelers than others too.. so it’s not black and white at all.