Excerpt:
The battle over banning burqas and hijabs has been waged at universities outside the United States for years, but now the debate has crossed the Atlantic, with a Massachusetts institution's newest safety measure.
As of January 1, students at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences must not only wear identification cards but make sure they are not wearing "any head covering that obscures a student's face," the policy reads, "for reasons of safety and security."
While some students might want to wear ski masks to cover their faces during New England's chilly winters and others might choose face coverings for dubious reasons of fashion, the rule appears to most clearly affect Muslim women.
Security concerns have led to explicit bans on Muslim veils in France and the Netherlands. Earlier this week, an Egyptian court upheld a university's ban on students taking exams while wearing the hijab on the grounds that female and male students were using the veil to disguise themselves and cheat on exams. The same ground has yet to be tread in the United States, but the Massachusetts college's first-in-the-nation ban could force the debate to begin in the land of the First Amendment.