A7 The Buffalo News/Thursday, February 2, 2017 The First 100 Days Career diplomats voice dissent DIPLOMACY • from A1 Trump’s immigration freeze resonates on a Mississippi campus By Stephanie Saul and Anemona Hartocollis N E W YOR K T I ME S STARKVILLE, Miss. – Coming from an Iranian city of around 150,000 people, Amir Rezazadeh felt a little out of place when he arrived at Mississippi State University, more than 100 miles from any metropolitan area and deep in the heart of the Bible Belt. But he soon came to like the quiet surroundings, where there was little to distract him from his horticulture studies, and where there was already a group of Middle Eastern students and professors to make him feel welcome. Ignoring half-serious warnings that he could be converted, he even began spending time at the Baptist Student Union, where he honed his English, discussed Christianity and Islam, played games and watched movies, and forged friendships with some of the Mississippi-born students. That is why he was more than a little taken aback this past week when students told him to his face that they agreed with President Trump’s order to temporarily ban visa holders from Iran and six other countries from entering the United States. “Some people say directly to you that it’s a good order,” he said, “that our country should have this order to ban terrorists.” He finds their position especially hurtful, he said, in light of his fears of what the order might mean for him and his wife, and roughly 80 other students from the seven countries. An estimated 17,000 students in the United States are touched by the ban, many of them in universities in the Northeast and California, where support for the president’s move has been thin. But there are also sizable numbers in universities like Mississippi State, out-of-the-way pockets in states that voted for Trump. The move may be bringing to the surface hidden tensions between ambitious Middle Eastern students who have been welcomed to the United States with scholarships and job opportunities, and fellow students and other res- idents who believe the threat of terrorism necessitates a second look at who is let into the country. The Mississippi State president, Mark E. Keenum, in a carefully worded statement that avoided the overt criticism of some counterparts at other universities, said that the university would try to help the students affected by the order and that its “core values of diversity, inclusion, tolerance and safety for all – regardless their country of origin – do not waver or change.” That was a different message from that of the governor, Phil Bryant, who has said there were “a lot of people overreacting” to what he believed was a reasonable pause in immigration from the seven countries. Many students and alumni, on Facebook and in public, have expressed support for Trump’s move. Zach Cooke, 21, an electrical engineering major from Amory, Miss., said that while the ban’s execution was poor, “With what’s going on at the moment, I think a limit on who can come into the country is not a bad idea.” At the same time, a vocal segment of the school and town – county voters went narrowly for Hillary Clinton in a state that was heavily pro-Trump – has expressed support for the affected students. At a vigil Wednesday night, about 250 people gathered on an open green near the football stadium, carrying candles and holding signs. “Immigrants make America great,” read one. One organizer, a veterinary medicine student named Anna Walker, said she was inspired by a photograph of a protest at Washington Square Park in New York. “I realized that we needed a show of support in smaller communities,” Walker, 26, said. Once known solely for its agriculture program – even today fans ring cowbells at football games, and prized herds of cows graze on campus pastures – Mississippi State has worked in recent years to excel in technology and engineering, recruited scientists from all over the world to its 21,000-student campus and attracted hundreds of millions in dollars in research money, much of it from the federal government.