Not in the US🔗

by Matthias Felleisen

23 Sep 2025

The researchers of the Types mailing lists have decided that traveling to the United States is unsafe, and doing so apparently demonstrates a lack of support for US universities. So they want to temporarily stop having conferences in the US.

After reading the various posts, I decided to reply but the moderator doesn’t seem to like what I would like to say, and so I am putting it up here.

Dear colleagues of the types list:

I am so happy to see that you have re-discovered your moral backbone.

Here is a handful of examples that came to my mind about where we have placed SIGPLAN conferences over the last decade:

• POPL in London, in the UK, a country where quiet Christian prayer can land you in prison;

• ICFP in Germany, a country where left-wing or right-wing thugs may attack our Jewish colleagues “just because” (yeap, can happen on US campuses too);

• PLDI in Bejing, a country that has systematically re-educated tortured, imprisoned and killed Muslim and Buddhist people;

• upcoming: ICFP and OOPSLA in Singapore, the cleanest fortress of democratic values, without chewing gum on any sidewalks.

More URLS references available on request.

If your country isn’t mentioned and you’d like to have it listed, let me know.