Crossing Borders
How CAS experts and students are using languages to confront challenges across the globe.
That Dutch asylum wrangle was in 2002, when Ngom was asked to provide a second opinion on the man’s country of origin based on an analysis of his speech. Since then, Ngom, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor and director of BU’s African Language Program, has become involved in immigration law and teaches a class in the use of linguistic forensics in asylum cases. He is among the CAS faculty who are setting the standard in foreign language education, and students are reaping the benefits. When they commit to studying one of some 25 languages on offer at BU, students learn more than just grammar, vocabulary, and conversation. They also delve into the history, literature, and culture of the region in which each language is—or was—spoken. What they come away with is a combination of linguistic expertise and cultural understanding that equips them to tap opportunities around the world. In this three-part report, arts&sciences talks with Ngom, as well as an alum who edits news reports from 167 countries, and a student who studied with members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Following the Linguistic Fingerprints
Photo by Natalie Behring-Chisholm/Getty Images
They scale barbed-wire fences, hide in crowded fishing boats, and stow away in cargo trucks. Each year, more than 800,000 men, women, and children cross international borders seeking refuge from persecution.
Under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 145 nations have agreed to protect those who are at risk in their own countries because of war or persecution. If asylum seekers can prove their claim is “well founded,” they are granted refugee status. If they cannot prove they are fleeing legitimate persecution, they are deported. The challenge, says Associate Professor Fallou Ngom, is how to identify asylum seekers when “they do not have documents. They have only their mouths.”
“Every human has features in his or her voice that makes it unique”—a linguistic fingerprint.
As a result, many governments have begun using “language analysis” to determine an asylum seeker’s country of origin. The process entails an interview with the asylum seeker, which is then analyzed by a native speaker in his or her language. The expert assigned to the case of the asylum seeker from Sierra Leone had determined that the man—who spoke a variation of the West African language Fula—was lying about his country of origin. The expert was from Africa, but not from the same country as the asylum seeker, and he spoke Fula—but not the same dialect. The government had hired him based “on the assumption that if you come from one country, then you know how people speak there,” Ngom says. “This makes sense for lay people, but it doesn’t make sense for linguists.”
When Ngom listened to the interview and reviewed the report, he was not surprised to find that the “expert” was wrong. A mistaken verdict has far-reaching consequences for asylum seekers. “Wherever the so-called expert says he thinks they are from, that’s where they are going to be deported,” even if it’s the wrong country, Ngom says.
“Wherever the so-called expert says he thinks they are from, that’s where they are going to be deported,” even if it’s the wrong country.
Photo courtesy of Fallou Ngom
The case motivated Ngom to become involved in immigration law worldwide, and in 2003, he joined a team of linguists in developing guidelines that outline criteria for selecting a language analyst, and a method for conducting interviews with asylum seekers. The goal of the interview is to acquire a sample of the asylum seeker’s “spontaneous speech,” which Ngom equates with a fingerprint. “Every human has features in his or her voice that makes it unique,” he says. To secure this linguistic fingerprint, the interviewer must frame the conversation around personal and cultural topics relevant to the asylum seeker, such as his or her memories of home and favorite traditional dishes. The analyst must therefore possess a thorough understanding of the asylum seeker’s culture, including nuances that could be easily missed or misinterpreted by an uninformed government official. On a linguistic level, the analyst must also possess a thorough understanding of syntax and pronunciation. Analyzing the cultural and linguistic elements together, Ngom says, will provide the expert with “fair, accurate, reliable evidence of where the person comes from.” The guidelines have been used across the globe, with many of the team’s recommendations incorporated into the immigration procedures used by Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Now, BU students can learn about the use of linguistic forensics in asylum cases in Language & Culture Contacts, which Ngom taught in spring 2014 for the first time. He puts students through a rigorous study of language anthropology and immigration law, and by the end of the semester, “they have an understanding that no one else does.” They can analyze cases, determine a speaker’s country of origin, and be prepared “to lead a team of experts from around the world” in an effort that is becoming ever more critical.
As for the fate of the Fula-speaking refugee, Ngom says he wasn’t told the final outcome—a common procedure in asylum verdicts where his primary task is merely to “ensure the immigration judges who ultimately decide on these serious cases have access to the best objective information.”
Pursuing a Patchwork Profession
Photo by R. Ian Lloyd/Masterfile
When Lauren Finch (CAS’11, COM’11) moved to Madrid after graduating from CAS, she planned to teach English for a year, and then return to Boston and pursue newspaper journalism.
After studying in Madrid, Spain, Lauren Finch made the city her home. Photo courtesy of Lauren Finch
But during her time abroad, Finch fell in love with the city, and at the end of the year she had to make a difficult choice: return to Boston and jump-start her journalism career, or stay in Madrid where her options were less certain. To Finch, it felt like deciding between her two passions, Spanish and journalism, “my happiness and my future career success.”
At CAS, she had combined her interests with degrees in Hispanic language & literature and news & editorial journalism through the BU Dual Degree Program, which “lets you essentially be two different students.” She developed both interests outside of the classroom, as well, honing her journalism skills as a city desk correspondent at the Boston Globe and studying abroad in Madrid. Six months in Spain gave Finch a deeper appreciation for Spanish—and an understanding of how much more there still was to learn. After graduation, she returned to Madrid on a yearlong teaching visa.
A self-described “hard-working, almost neurotic, intense person,” Finch found the more relaxed Spanish lifestyle helped her to take a deep breath and “open myself up to new opportunities.” In Spain, she says, family and friends come first, work second. Finch reevaluated her priorities and realized she loved her new home. She chose to stay.
“When I can’t find happiness in the form that I expected it to be in, I create it out of something else.”
The decision was freeing, and it forced her to be creative about her career. She took on freelance writing jobs and a part-time editing position for Global Voices Online, a telecommunications news service composed of bloggers who report on stories marginalized in the international media. The bloggers, from 167 countries, write in up to 30 languages, and “it’s cool to see their posts translated into English so you can read their perspectives.” Editing and translating for Global Voices has given her a new passion: she is working toward a master’s in translation from Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
How will Finch wrap her interests in Spanish, journalism, editing, and translation into one career? She isn’t sure she wants to. She is happy with her “patchwork” profession and “a lot less stressed about planning everything out. When I can’t find happiness in the form that I expected it to be in, I create it out of something else.”
Coloring in the Caricatures
Photo by Khalil Hamra/Associated Press
Holly Bicerano (CAS’16, GRS’16) has strong opinions, and she is not afraid to share them. The trait runs in the family; her father, who is Jewish, emigrated from Turkey, and showed little tolerance for Arabs and Muslims.
She adopted those views, and, after watching in horror attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants, became adamantly pro-Israel. In high school, she wrote op-eds and discussed her political views on Facebook. “It was hard for me to sympathize with the Palestinians under Israeli occupation because I had not been exposed to their perspective,” she says. “The views I grew up with about Arabs and Muslims made me see their suffering as different from the suffering of Israelis and Jews.”
Bicerano held firmly to these beliefs until her sophomore year at CAS. At BU, she began learning Arabic and Hebrew; her language and culture courses, combined with her involvement in student groups like J Street, broadened her views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. She decided she needed to learn more about the Arab perspective, and in May 2013 enrolled in an Arabic language school in Egypt where the majority of the teachers were members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Photo courtesy of Holly Bicerano (standing center, black shirt)
“We tend to get caught up in our biases and reduce people on the other side to caricatures. It took a long time for me to realize the mistake I had made in assuming things about the Muslim Brotherhood.”
An Islamic political organization founded on the teachings of the Koran, the Muslim Brotherhood is perceived as a terrorist organization by many countries. In 2012, it became the first democratically elected political party in Egypt when its candidate Mohamed Morsi won 51 percent of the public vote in a second-round runoff. But many opposed the Muslim Brotherhood, and deadly clashes followed, leading Egypt’s military to herald “a collapse of the state.” Bicerano was entering this charged atmosphere in May 2013.
She had “basic assumptions that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, and the people in it are terrorists,” but despite her preconceptions, “I wanted to meet them” and get their perspective. She was careful not to mention her religion or her views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the conversation was unavoidable. Her study consisted of one-on-one conversations in Arabic with her teacher, and within the first few days, the talk turned to politics.
Her teacher asked Bicerano if she was Jewish, and she said yes.
The discussion continued peacefully. Her teacher and the other members of the school “were accepting of who I am, and what my views are,” she says. “All my assumptions about the Muslim Brotherhood disappeared in the first week.” While she and her teacher disagreed on religion and politics, the opportunity to hear his perspective in his own words had a “profound impact” on Bicerano, and opened her eyes to the nuances of the political situation roiling outside the school walls. Bicerano was eager to understand the issues from both sides—the Brotherhood and the Tamarod movement opposing it—and even attended a Tamarod protest in Tahrir Square with a family from her apartment building.
The experience of speaking with the Brotherhood and the Tamarod in their own language caused Bicerano to reconsider her political views and her assumptions about Muslims—“reconsider everything, really.”
Just days after Bicerano returned to the United States at the end of June 2013, millions of Egyptians flooded the streets to demand Morsi’s resignation. The military ousted him from office and declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, launching raids on its supporters that led to the deaths of more than 600 Egyptians.
As Bicerano watches these events unfold, she thinks “about how I might have not cared about those things two years ago because I would have had assumptions about Muslims and Arabs. We tend to get caught up in our biases and reduce people on the other side to caricatures. It took a long time for me to realize the mistake I had made in assuming things about the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The experience of speaking with the Brotherhood and the Tamarod in their own language caused Bicerano to reconsider her political views and her assumptions about Muslims—“reconsider everything, really. You can’t change this much in three years without being a more open-minded person.”