Description:

We invite you to join us in an unprecedented event: on Saturday, May 2nd there will be a public reading at Northwestern University of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary.

Although never charged with a crime, Slahi has been imprisoned for more than thirteen years in the American facility in Cuba and frequently subjected to “special interrogation techniques” that have included the full repertoire of tortures.

Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary has been called a “vision of hell beyond Orwell, beyond Kafka” and at the same time, a powerful expression of—and summons to—“enduring faith in our common humanity.”

We strongly believe all of us at Northwestern must attend to this book carefully in order to better understand what has happened in and to United States and the world over the past several decades, and what continues to happen. The future of our democracy depends on it.

The reading will take place in The Graduate School Commons at Seabury, on Sheridan, beginning at 8:00 in the morning. We invite you to take one of the 15-minute time slots and read from the text. Please use this sign up link to let us know as soon as possible whether you will be able to join us.

The event is Co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of Political Science, the Buffett Institute, the Center for Legal Studies, the Department of Anthropology, the International Studies Program, the Program in American Studies, and the Program in Middle East and North African Studies.