Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Priest will speak at Scripps College as part of the Scripps College Humanities Institute fall lecture series “Secrets in a Democracy” on October 23, at 7:30 p.m. in Balch Auditorium. Priest’s talk is titled “The Perils of Secrecy: From Secret Prisons to Walter Reed.” The event, co-sponsored by the Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series: Voice and Vision, is free and open to the public.
As an investigative journalist of The Washington Post, Priest has written extensively on the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert counterterrorism operations around the world, the agency’s secret rendition and detention practices, the intelligence lapses involving the September 11 plot, and the failure of pre-war intelligence in Iraq. In 2007, she co-authored a series on Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s failure to provide outpatient care to returning soldiers and Marines. In 2008, she co-authored a four-part series on dangerously inadequate medical care for immigrants in detention.
Priest has received numerous awards, including the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for “The Other Walter Reed,” and the 2006 Pulitzer for Beat Reporting for her work on CIA secret prisons and counterterrorism operations overseas. Other honors include the Robert F. Kennedy Award, George Polk Award, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Annenberg School of Communication’s Selden Ring Award, the Overseas Press Club Award for interpretation of international affairs, and the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis on Foreign Affairs.
Priest is also a contributor to CBS News and 60 Minutes, and is a board member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She holds a B.A. in political science from the University of California at Santa Cruz and lives in Washington, DC.
Secrets in a Democracy
Bound up in such concepts as sacredness, intimacy, danger and the forbidden, secrecy is something familiar to everyone. People may perceive secrets as guilty, conspiratorial, or pathological, forgetting that secrets can also protect identity, intentions, actions, and property. At the collective level, many have argued that official secrecy is incompatible with democracy. Others allow that institutional secrecy is sometimes legitimate and necessary.
Through an art exhibition and a lecture and film series, the Scripps College Humanities Institute explores when secrecy is legitimate and when it is injurious; the ways in which we keep, reveal, and discover secrets and what they say about us; as well as what ought to happen when formal secrets are revealed. For more information about the event, call the Scripps College Humanities Institute (909) 621-8326 or visit the website.
Scripps College Humanities Institute
Founded in 1986 to promote interdisciplinary research and public discussion of important issues in culture and society, the Humanities Institute has consistently been an important center of the intellectual life of the Claremont Colleges. As part of Scripps’ tradition of interdisciplinary education, the Humanities Institute brings together both prominent visiting scholars and younger scholars doing cutting-edge work, lectures by faculty at the Claremont Colleges, and a program for Scripps students who are appointed as Junior Fellows of the Institute.