Located a few miles outside of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib prison came to international attention in 2004 when reports and photographs of torture and prisoner abuse surfaced in The New Yorker and on the CBS news show 60 Minutes II. These disclosures, along with subsequent revelations of “extraordinary rendition” of terror suspects to countries that practice torture, the ongoing detention of prisoners without trial at Guantanamo Bay, and persuasive evidence of a network of secret “black hole” prisons administered by the CIA, have had profound ethical, legal, and political repercussions for the United States in the world at large and for the self-conception of its citizens.
Thinking Humanity After Abu Ghraib is an attempt to come to terms with our government's apparent practices of torture, rendition, abusive treatment, and indefinite detention. In a variety of plenary and panel discussions we will approach these issues from a host of perspectives, including the legal, political, psychological, philosophical, and ethical. Please join us for what promises to be a thought-provoking and challenging conference which—while taking its start from the political use of torture—addresses the hopes and promises of what it means to be human today.
Free; no registration required
Open to the public.
Thursday, October 19
Kresge Auditorium
7:30 PM
Seymour Hersh
Keynote Address
Seymour Hersh is one of the nation's premier investigative journalists and regular contributor to The New Yorker on military issues and security matters. He gained worldwide recognition for his exposure of the My Lai massacre and its cover up during the Vietnam War and again in 2004 for his disclosure of prison abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Mr. Hersh was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and is the author of numerous books.
Please join us for an all day conference the following day (October 20th) at Tresidder Union.
Visit continuingstudies.stanford.edu for more information on presenters, titles of presentations, links to relevant sites, bibliographies, and downloadable articles.
Sponsors: Thinking Humanity After Abu Ghraib is sponsored by Stanford Continuing Studies, and co-sponsored with financial underwriting by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Stanford Center on Ethics, the Ethics in Society Program, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Stanford School of Law.