Raise Your Voice
Laken Riley Act and Its Potential Impact on US Higher Education
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ivan Nikolov
In this paper, I use a documentary research method to discuss details related to potential repercussions on the United States higher education of one of the most recent laws signed by President Trump. The Laken Riley Act, based on the killing of an American student by an illegal immigrant in 2024, was introduced on January 6, 2025, and signed by President Trump as a law on January 29, 2025. Given its emotional charge, it was passed with a substantial majority in both the House of Representatives (263:156) and in the Senate (64:35) The Act requires the Department of Homeland Security to arrest non-US nationals (aliens) who have committed a crime, including theft, burglary, but also shoplifting, over the amount of $100. In such cases said aliens can be deported based on admission of guilt without a court decision. The bill gives authority to state governments to sue federal agencies for immigration-related decisions, including but not limited to failures of the visa issuing federal agency to “fulfill requirements relating to inspecting individuals seeking admission into the United States...”. The law also limits the issuance of visas, including student visas to citizens of 13 countries, which refuse to accept their deported nationals, including China, India, Russia, and possibly Mexico. Considering that Indian students are almost 30 percent of the 1.1 million international student population in the US colleges and universities, followed by Chinese students, serious repercussions may be expected for US higher education, especially in the STEM-related graduate programs.
A New Century, the Same Old Master Discourse of Translation - from Arabic
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Said Faiq
One might expect contemporary translation practices to reflect evolving paradigms of cultural understanding. Yet, the translation of Arabic texts into mainstream Western languages—especially English and French—continues to be governed by frameworks that prioritize stereotypes and hegemonic narratives. While the twenty first century has witnessed revolutionary developments in translation technology—ranging from digital platforms and artificial intelligence to social media algorithms and machine learning systems—the underlying master discourses that shape translation remain largely unchanged, whereby the long-established power dynamics that shape it have remained stable. Instead of disrupting existing paradigms, new technologies often serve to maintain and even augment pre-existing master discourses that govern the selection, translation, and interpretation of texts. Drawing on instances of literary import from Arabic, the purpose here is to interpretatively explore how a culturally defined master discourse affects the act of translation: how constraints and disciplinary demands of a master discourse shape mediation, leading along the way to the construction of certain ways of exercising power and representation interculturally (mechanisms of text selection and discursive (often exotic) choices). As a result, alternative voices that challenge the requirements of this master discourse and aim to offer representations that reflect the complex Arab realities, are usually excluded from the translation market. By examining how the master discourse mediates representation through translation, some sense and sensibility might be injected in the intercultural exchanges between Arabic and Western languages; hopefully, perhaps; doubtfully.
