The Humanities Institute | 2016 Fall The “War on Terror,” 15 Years Later

August 16, 2016

Student Workshop – Lina Sergie Attar

When Conflict Hits Home: Processing Loss while Building Hope for Syria Syria is the largest humanitarian crisis of our lifetime. The unprecedented scale of destruction and displacement has created a scenario of universal despair where it seems that nothing can be done to create a positive outcome for Syrians suffering in the crossfire of a […]

August 11, 2016

Student Only Workshop – Michael Deutsch

A Discussion with Human Rights Attorney Michael Deutsch from the People’s Law Firm Michael Deutsch is a renowned human rights attorney with the Chicago “People’s Law Office,” and a past Legal Director of the New York based “Center for Constitutional Rights.” Mr. Deutsch a public interest lawyer of the year has served on the legal […]

Public Lecture – Zareena Grewal

The Quran in the American Imagination The Quran is one of the most iconic objects in American debates about racial and religious tolerance. Is the Quran a “good book”? Is it like the Bible and other scriptures? Or is its message more violent, more misogynistic, more intolerant? Or is the danger in the power readers ascribe […]

Tuesday Noon Academy – Sumita Pahwa

How Islamist Intellectuals, Activists and Militants Have Responded Differently to the West Islamist activists in the Middle East have been fundamentally shaped by the political, intellectual and religious challenges that Western influence has posed to their societies over the past century. Starting with Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna’s mobilization against Western missionaries and colonialism, and […]

Public Lecture – Lisa Hajjar

Owning Up to American Torture Within days of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some officials in the Bush administration began contemplating the notion that captured suspects might need to be tortured in order to collect “actionable intelligence.” Over the next few months, the ground was laid–through an executive order, legal opinions, and policy directives–for what developed into the US torture […]

Tuesday Noon Academy – Pardis Mahdavi

From Trafficking to Terror: Connecting Two Global Wars The “war on terror” and the “war on trafficking”, two seemingly separate initiatives, have become interwoven in recent years and conspire to castigate Muslim majority countries as sites of depravity, difference and danger, fueling Islamophobic rhetoric about the “clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1993). Both discourses are raced, […]

Public Lecture – Vijay Prashad

The Global War on Terror from the Standpoint of its Victims Seen from a village in Waziristan, in the upper reaches of Pakistan, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) appears quite differently than it does in the anti-septic briefing rooms at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It is to understand the GWOT from that vantage […]

Public Event – Molly Crabapple

Drawing Blood: Molly Crabapple “A punk Joan Didion, a young Patti Smith with paint on her hands, a twenty-first century Sylvia Plath.” —Booklist Art, sex, politics, and survival in our times: For Molly Crabapple, this has been her life’s work. And it’s taken her from New York City’s burlesque scene, to the torture trials in […]

Student Workshop – Steve Negus

Reporting Conflict in the Arab World The U.S invasion of Iraq in 2003 triggered a new era in international reporting on the Middle East, with new technologies, practices and opportunities. Military embedding for reporters, the proliferation of smart phones, and new dangers such as the spread of kidnapping for profit encouraged news outlets to rely […]

Public Talk – Michael Deutsch

Representing and Defending Political Activists in U.S. Courts in the Age of Terrorism Mr. Deutsch will discuss the emergence of Federal and State “terrorism” laws, including sentencing enhancements, special court secrecy and security procedures and the use of Grand Jury inquisitions which target and criminalize political activists involved in international solidarity work and domestic protests […]

Public Lecture- Joseph Masco

Anticipatory States and Planetary Peril What are the emerging impacts of “pre-emption” as a key policy of the post-9/11 counter-terror state in the United States? In this lecture, Joseph Masco â€“ professor at the University of Chicago and author of two award-winning books â€“ traces the emergence of anticipatory governance from the Cold War to […]