Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia serving as keynote speaker at AAPI MENA Women in Legal Academy Workshop

CARLISLE, PA—On April 24, 2026, Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia will join Sudha Setty, president and chief executive officer of the Law School Admission Council, as keynote speakers for the Fifth Annual Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Middle East and North African (MENA) Women in Legal Academy Workshop at Roger Williams School of Law.

Wadhia and Setty, the former dean of City University of New York School of Law and Western New England University School of Law, are co-founders of the workshop, which launched in 2021 and was inspired by a need for community and tools for AAPI women entering or in the legal academy. Per Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession, “Overall, Asian Americans have penetrated virtually every sector of the legal profession, but they are significantly underrepresented in the leadership ranks of law firms, government, and academia.”

Wadhia is herself a first-generation American and law student and describes the AAPI MENA workshop as one she wishes had existed when she entered the legal academy, first as an adjunct professor in 2005 and later as a full-time faculty member at Penn State Dickinson Law in 2008. At the Law School, she founded the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic (CIRC), where she has been teaching alongside doctrinal courses in immigration, asylum, and law and inequality. The AAPI MENA workshop will feature plenary panels, works-in-progress sessions, and professional development opportunities.

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is a nationally respected immigration scholar, law professor, author, and attorney. She joined Penn State Dickinson Law as a Clinical Professor of Law in 2008 and was named Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar in 2013.

Wadhia's scholarship has focused on the role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and policy and the intersection of immigration, race, and national security. She is the author of two award-winning academic press books by New York University Press and co-author of a textbook on Immigration & Nationality Law by Carolina Academic Press.