Enemy combatants. Enhanced interrogation techniques. Indefinite detention. The language we use to communicate Guantánamo’s recent history is both legally precise and frustratingly indirect. It also comes loaded with politicized connotations. Given the confusing and high-stakes nature of Guantánamo’s language, students at the University of California, Riverside, felt it was important to create a linguistic “intervention”…

A year before 9/11 meant anything in the United States, I found myself cornered at a dinner party in Santiago, Chile, trapped into a conversation with a middle-aged man, a friend-of-a-friend of a second cousin of my host parents. He was trying to teach me about Pinochet and human rights, and I will never forget…