Professor Wadhia joins 'The Courts and Our Community' panel on immigration

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—On March 4, Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia participated in an immigration panel at Dickinson College. This panel was part of "The Courts and The Community: An Educational Series for the Public," an initiative spearheaded by Dickinson College President John E. Jones III ’80, a former federal judge himself, alongside federal judges Jennifer Wilson and Karoline Mehalchick.

Co-hosted by the President’s Office and Dickinson’s Center for Civic Learning and Action (CCLA), the six-session workshop series invites community members—students, faculty, staff, and local residents—to engage directly with federal judges and lawyers in interactive conversations regarding the rule of law, the court system, and the U.S. Constitution.

Other panelists included United States Magistrate Judge Hon. Sean A. Camoni, Craig R. Shagin of The Shagin Law Group, and Widener University Commonwealth Law School Professor Jill E. Family.

Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is a nationally respected immigration scholar. She joined Penn State Dickinson Law as a Clinical Professor of Law in 2008 and was named Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar in 2013. Professor 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. Her work has been widely cited in law reviews and federal courts, including the Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals.

Professor Wadhia has published in Duke Law Journal, Emory Law Journal, Texas Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, Harvard Latino Law Review, Administrative Law Review, Howard Law Journal, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, University of Colorado Law Review, Cambridge University Press, and Columbia Journal of Race and Law, among others. She is the author of two immigration books by New York University Press. Her current scholarly projects include co-editing the industry-leading treatise on immigration law and procedure (LexisNexis), a textbook on Immigration & Nationality Law (Carolina Academic Press, 2026), an article examining the impact of Loper Bright on immigration cases (Loyola Law Review, 2026), and a book that brings together immigration law, history and memoir (NYU Press, 2027).

Professor Wadhia has taught law courses in immigration since 2005 and received the Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award from the American Immigration Lawyers Association in 2019. She founded the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic (CIRC) at Penn State Dickinson Law in 2008. Since then, she has provided clinical training in community outreach and education, pro bono legal support, and policy work to hundreds of students, many of whom practice immigration law across the United States. From 2023– 2024, Professor Wadhia served in a presidential appointment as Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where she received the DHS Outstanding Service Medal at the end of her tenure.