About this letter
Backstory
This letter was started in response to the Trump administration's decision to separate children of migrant families, some as young as 12 months of age, from their parents as a result of Attorney General Jeff Session's "zero tolerance" policy on border crossers, many of whom are seeking asylum.
Over the course of 2 days (50 hrs), we collected 1,374 verified signatures from professionals all over the world who wanted to make it absolutely clear that the empirical evidence on child development overwhelmingly shows that this policy is tantamount to abuse on the young children.
This letter was posted openly here and delivered to the head of Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
As of our latest update (9:00pm EST on 7/05/2018) a total of 2,019 verified professionals have signed the online letter.
Purpose
The goal of this letter is to raise awareness of the long-term detrimental impacts that prolonged paternal separation can have on children, specifically with regards to the U.S. government's policy of separating migrant children at the border.
The letter is released openly in the hopes that it can also be adopted as a form letter to state and federal representatives to raise awareness of this issue.
Who signed this letter?
The 1,374 original signatories on this letter are nonpartisan academics (e.g., professors, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, research staff), clinicians (e.g., medical doctors, nurses, clinical psychologists, social workers), or other specialists (e.g., public health officials) who have training and experience with the research literature on human development, either from a psychological or biological perspective.
This list includes respected scientists in psychology, biology, neuroscience, medicine, and human development from a variety of internationally renowned universities, including:
- The University of Pittsburgh
- Carnegie Mellon University
- University of California, Berkeley
- Yale University
- Princeton University
- University of Minnesota
- University of Delaware
- Northwestern University
- University of Oregon
- University of Rochester
- University of California, Los Angeles
- New York University
- Stanford University
- University of Washington
- University of Chicago
- University of Virginia
- Harvard University
- Boston University
- University of Minnesota
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- The University of Texas at Austin
- Johns Hopkins University
- Vanderbilt University
- Wellesley College
- Duke University
- Rutgers University
- University of Pennsylvania
- Cornell University
- University of Connecticut
- Columbia University
- University of California San Diego
- Georgetown University
- Trinity University
- University of Toronto
- Temple University
- Brown University
- University of California, San Francisco
- Stanford University
Signatures were vetted based on either a valid research institution email address or a secondary verification via internet search.
Additional signatories are being updated on a regular basis to the posted letter on the website.
Please note, that if you signed this letter but your name does not appear on the main letter, it is because we could not verify your qualifications to address the literature on human development (e.g., only first name provided). We appreciate your support on this effort, but wanted to keep the letter signatories restricted to those who can speak to the scientific literature.
Team
The following people were instrumental in putting this letter together:
- Timothy Verstynen, Ph.D.
- Andrea Weinstein, Ph.D.
- Anna Fisher, Ph.D.
- Elizabeth Bonawitz, Ph.D.
- Jennifer Honeycutt, Ph.D.
- Amanda Kentner, PhD
- Kaitlin Flannery, PhD
- Dylan Gee, Ph.D.
- Abby Sullivan, JD
- Marsha Weinraub, Ph.D.
- Melissa Koenig, Ph.D.
- Yvette Harris, Ph.D.
- Laura Schultz, Ph.D.
- Emily Burdett, Ph.D.
- Sandra Waxman, Ph.D.
- Kim MacLean, Ph.D.
Contact
For questions and inquiries about this letter, please contact Timothy Verstynen Ph.D. (timothyv [at] gmail.com).