On July 6, 2020, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced that nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students could not take full online course loads and remain in the United States. International students risked deportation if the college or university they attended switched to remote learning for the fall 2020 semester, which many had already announced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Monday, Feb. 17, a panel of Five College professors held a teach-in in Hooker Auditorium titled “The Middle East Crisis: How Did We Get Here? What’s Next?”, examining the impact of U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East. The catalyst of the event was the death of Iranian General Qasem Suleimani, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in early January.
Sophie Soloway ’23 writes about the political stronghold of far-right parties in Germany after a regional election. The country’s socialist party, Die Linke, won, and the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), came in second place. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party (CDU) placed third.
Four months into my semester and amidst major political turbulence over the ever-looming Brexit deadline, journalist Lyra McKee was killed by paramilitary gunfire in the city of Derry. McKee, a young, gay, female reporter, wrote extensively about the country’s restrictive laws regarding abortion and same-sex marriage. Citizens on either side of the conflict erupted into debate, eventually culminating in the British Parliament’s July decision to legalize both same-sex marriage and abortion.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moved to prorogue the Parliamentary session for five weeks on Sept. 9. In the face of mounting pressures from all sides of English politics to finalize action within the European Union (EU), Johnson has suspended Parliament from meeting until three weeks before the highly awaited Brexit plan is meant to be released.
