Saaedah Shiravany, an Iranian MBA student at a top US business school, says news of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US left her feeling “empty”.
Ms Shiravany (not her real name) worries that she will be unable to graduate because the ban, covering Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia as well as her homeland, would prevent her from participating in an overseas corporate assignment that is a requirement of her course. She fears that if she were to leave the US for the assignment, she may not be able to re-enter the country to complete her studies.
“This ban has robbed me of the experience I came here to have,” she says. Leaving the US would mean saying goodbye to completing her MBA next year. Ms Shiravany does not want to give her real name to the Financial Times because she fears that speaking out may affect her employment prospects.