Early in the morning of Feb. 24, Russian military forces began invading Ukraine. According to NBC News, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “special military operation” in eastern regions of Ukraine, but in a matter of hours, land attacks as well as air strikes occurred in eastern and northern areas of the country.
Scholars from across the world gathered virtually on Monday, Feb. 21 to celebrate the launch of a new language revitalization journal. The Living Language Journal, a multilingual and open-access resource platformed by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, plans to host a variety of academic and non-academic writings centering projects in the emerging field of language revitalization, which aims to re-engage with languages considered endangered by scholars and activists.
Content warning: this article discusses murder, gendered violence and sexual assault.
Last Monday, Muhammad Waseem was fully acquitted in an appeals court of the 2016 murder of his sister, Qandeel Baloch — a murder to which he confessed. Waseem’s acquittal, despite both confession and evidence against him, is reflective of a larger pattern of failure to deliver justice to victims of femicide in Pakistan.
Africa, the second largest continent, has over 2,000 distinct languages. Nigeria, its most populous country, is host to about 522 languages. Due to colonial rule, many countries in Africa designate either French or English as their official language. However, with its growing influence, there has been swelling support to make Swahili the lingua franca, or common language, for all of Africa. Swahili is one of the official languages of the African Union. Additionally, it was the first African language to be honored by the United Nations in its designation of July 7 as World Kiswahili Language Day.
Last year, the Myanmar military, officially known as the Tatmadaw, orchestrated a coup that removed Aung San Suu Kyi, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, from power after her political party, the National League for Democracy, won the election by a landslide. Because the title Myanmar was appointed by the military to replace the Burmese title of Burma, this article will refer to the country by the latter. This month marks the anniversary of the declaration of a state of emergency made by the military on Feb. 1, 2021. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing remains in power, and many people in Burma are still protesting.
As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches into another year, perpetual changes to the norm have become a regular part of life. Students looking to participate in a study-abroad program for the Spring 2022 semester had to be willing to adapt to an evolving COVID-19 situation in addition to adjusting to studying in another country. Some destinations and programs have not yet reopened and others are operating with restrictions.
At the start of spring semester, the College announced that the campus resource once known as the Language Resource Center, located in Ciruti, would be renamed as the Language and Culture Commons via an ‘MHC This Week’ email. Though this name change has been in motion for years, its recent retitling signals the Commons’ commitment to cultural and linguistic education.
Two months ago, South African researchers discovered the new COVID-19 variant now named Omicron. While their prompt report garnered accolades from the World Health Organization, many countries in the West, such as the U.K., U.S. and Canada, readily enacted travel bans against South Africa and other African nations. The justification behind the travel bans was to reduce the spread of the Omicron variant. However, according to the WHO, “Implementing blanket travel bans, which are not effective in suppressing international spread, as clearly demonstrated by the Omicron experience, … may discourage transparent and rapid reporting of emerging [variants of concern].”
In December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin increased the presence of Russian troops on the Russia-Ukraine border. The New York Times reported that this maneuver was accompanied by demands that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should violate its standing open-door policy, which permits any country to apply for membership, and bar Ukraine from ever applying for membership. In the same article, the Times reported that Putin also “wanted NATO allies to pull all troops and nuclear weapons from former Soviet republics and nations that once belonged to the Warsaw Pact.”
“What you see today, a young girl forced to marry, get pregnant and [die], is not an aberration. It is part of the same continuum. Female persons are not seen as fully human, with individual rights, choice, rights to control our own bodies,” Zimbabwean feminist activist and the international head of Action Aid International, Everjoice Win, declared on Twitter on Aug. 6 in response to the widespread practice of child marriages in Zimbabwe.
