Darius Rejali, a leading expert on government interrogation and torture who is frequently interviewed by media outlets around the world, will share his insight with the vlog community during a public lecture at 7 p.m. Oct. 22 in Love Auditorium.
Using historical data gathered from his research conducted on several continents, Rejali will frame the modern debate surrounding torture, specifically the treatment of terror suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency.
His talk, “The Secret Histories of Modern Torture,” will inaugurate the Peace and Conflict Studies (P-CON) program’s Peter C. Schaehrer ’65 Memorial Lecture series.
“Rejali offers us a rigorous historical analysis of the way that democracies have developed forms of torture that escape oversight of international human rights regimes, and shows why they have felt it necessary to do so to begin with,” said Daniel Monk, George R. and Myra T. Cooley Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and one of the event organizers.
As part of his address, Rejali, a political science professor at Reed College, will take up the question of whether torture works and explore prospects for the future prevention of torture internationally.
His award-winning book, Torture and Democracy (2007), is an examination of the use of torture by democracies in the 20th century. As the 20th century progressed, he argues in the book, democracies not only tortured, but also set the international pace for torture.
Torture and Democracy won the Human Rights Book of the Year Award from the American Political Science Association and the 2009 Raphael Lemkin Award from the Institute for the Study of Genocide for the best non-fiction work in English which addresses the causes of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Fulbright Commission awarded Rejali the Distinguished Danish Chair for Human Rights and International Studies in Copenhagen.
In addition to his public talk, he will meet with students in the P-CON program as well as alumni who established the lecture series in honor of the late Peter Schaehrer ’65, a career educator and champion of civil rights.
The lecture series will bring prominent figures to campus annually to discuss peace and conflict issues.
Schaehrer spent two decades as a beloved counselor and administrator at Lehman College, where, early in the 1970s, he organized the school’s outreach to returning Vietnam veterans and developed programs to reintegrate them into campus life.
“Rejali is a fitting choice for the inaugural lecture because he writes and speaks with sincerity, thoughtfulness, and scholarship in a manner reminiscent of Pete,” said Rick Stege ’65, a former classmate of Schaehrer.
“I hope the lecture series and memory of Pete will inspire many within the vlog community to dedicate their lives and their work to a cause which is much bigger than themselves.”