U.S. Colleges, Citing Violence, Stay Away From Mexico

Many American colleges, citing the violence tied to drug gangs in parts of Mexico, are skipping summer programs there, The New York Times reported. While the violence is very real in parts of the country, some academic experts believe that -- depending on where the programs would be in the country -- the caution may be excessive. Geoffrey E. Braswell, an associate anthropology professor at the University of California at San Diego who plans to lead students on a visit to central Mexico in the fall, told the Times: "To make an analogy, I would not have considered taking students to Mississippi during the early 1960s or to Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention, but other parts of the U.S. were of course safe for travel. Mexico is that way.”