I’m going to link to one of my favorite online comic strips today, but for a serious reason: PHD comics, the tongue-in-cheek look at the life of a science graduate student, detailed the author’s detention by British authorities as he was trying to get into the country on a lecture tour. Here’s the first of the three installments.

This tale doesn’t fall into any of the predictable stereotypes: He’s a white male with no criminal record who was detained by British immigration officials. But some of it is predictable: He wasn’t told why he was stopped nor why he was let in. It was just a random irritant in the name of “security” - so don’t ask questions.

The third installment of the comic says he has heard from lots of research schools that this happens all the time, particularly if the lecturer/grad student isn’t a white guy - and that it is beginning to stifle some cross-border research.