This week marks a very important step for our project, as our national dialogue crosses the pond, becoming a truly international dialogue. Our director, Liz Sevcenko, will be bringing a version of our traveling exhibit to London, where it will be on display at New York University in London.  She will also be hosting a…

After a great residency at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, our traveling exhibit is heading west once again. From mid-October until the end of November, our colleagues at Arizona State University will be hosting the exhibit. This is the sixth stop for the exhibit, and like every stop before it, ASU will add its own…

September 11th continues to elicit painful memories of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93.  At the University of Massachusetts-Amherst this year, the attacks were remembered in a number of ways.  In addition to an on-campus vigil for those who perished, students were encouraged to consider some of the…

The itinerary for our traveling exhibit crisscrosses the country, from Providence, Rhode Island to Riverside, California; from St. Paul, Minnesota to Phoenix, Arizona. Each stop on the itinerary brings a distinct set of local considerations and concerns to the exhibit. In New York the exhibit was displayed right on Washington Square, an important site of…

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”…

Each new host institution brings its own style to our traveling exhibit. Having so many collaborating students and universities means that new ideas and ways of engaging the public are constantly being generated. Rutgers held a poetry reading. UC Riverside offered screenings of ‘Zero Dark Thirty.’ Various forms of media – from an interactive map…

Our traveling exhibit was launched at New York University in December, 2012. Since then it has been hosted by partner institutions across the country, and will continue traveling for the rest of the year and deep into 2014. Originally produced by student teams at twelve universities, the exhibit schedule has now expanded beyond these founding…

We have talked about this dream since you were a young man . . . how the American Dream is so much more than a good night’s sleep. But I cannot sleep anymore. Every morning, an alarm clock blares those three letters throughout my conscience. This is so much more than a virus. This is…

I did not truly begin to understand imperialism until I read modern Arabic literature in an undergraduate course at Rutgers. Though I had long been aware of empires as a concept, I had no grasp of what imperialism could mean to an individual until I read narratives written from the perspective of the colonized. I…

I feel very fortunate to have been able to participate as a dialogue facilitator for the Guantánamo Public Memory Project as a student at Rutgers University.  It has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my college career thus far.  Usually, before even beginning to discuss with others the premise of the project, I like to explain why I…