"The decision to drastically curtail the refugee program will abandon tens of thousands to the risk of persecution or worse and cede American leadership on a vitally important issue" and would not make the U.S. safer. The International Rescue Committee condemned the executive order; its president, David Miliband, said that the executive order presented "a test for the Western world ... of whether or not we hold fast to the values of non-discrimination and to universal values of freedom from persecution." Miliband also called it "a propaganda gift for all those who would do harm to the United States." The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held a thematic session reviewing the executive order on March 21, 2017, where representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee spoke on the ban. Breaking with past practice, the US government failed to send any representatives to the hearing. Scholars and experts Fifty-one Nobel Prize laureates, along with thousands of other scholars, including Fields Medal winners, John Bates Clark Medal recipients, and National Academy of Sciences members, signed a petition condemning the order, stating that the order compels the "unethical and discriminatory treatment of law-abiding, hard-working, and well-integrated immigrants fundamentally contravenes the founding principles of the United States" and was detrimental to the national interest. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai also condemned the executive order. The Wall Street Journal editorial board blasted Trump's executive order as "blunderbuss and broad". The New York Times labeled the executive order as "cruel, bigoted, cowardly, and self-defeating", calling it a "blatantly unconstitutional" and "un-American" decision that exacerbated "injury and suffering ... on families that had every reason to believe they had outrun carnage and despotism in their homelands to arrive in a singularly hopeful nation". The Sacramento Bee condemned the order as "sickening, draconian, disgraceful, and wrong on every level, to the point of incompetence". The Boston Globe described the act as "shameful" and "offensive", saying that it not only fails to protect Americans but also "hands a propaganda victory to ISIS, appearing to vindicate the claim that the United States is out to get Muslims". Michael Hayden, who served presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama in high-level intelligence positions, including NSA director and CIA director, said of the executive order: Academic and scientific community Over 6,000 college and university professors signed a national petition during the weekend of January 28 denouncing the executive