As calls for an end to force-feeding at Guantánamo persist with the start of Ramadan, Human Rights organization Reprieve and award-winning director Asif Kapadia released a four-minute video of U.S. actor and rapper Yasiin Bey (also known as Mos Def) experiencing the procedure, which is based on military instructions for force-feeding detainees. Click here…

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…

In 2007 Nonny de la Peña and Peggy Weil were awarded a MacArthur sponsored residency at BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition) as part of their New Media Producers Institute to create Gone Gitmo, an installation of Guantánamo Prison in the virtual environment of Second Life.  They built an interactive experience, integrating Defense Department footage of…

July 8, 2013: A federal judge called on President Obama to address force-feeding at Guantánamo in the face of mounting allegations that the practice violates international norms, as well as legal bids from detainees seeking to block the practice during the Ramadan holiday.     July 8, 1994: By noon Coast Guard cutters delivered 862 Haitians to…

Like most people, I’d heard of Guantanamo – the home of the most notorious prison in the world.  But I was intrigued when told a circus had gone to a side of the base almost no one has ever reported on – the side where military families, civilian contractors, support staff, and more than a…

June 18, 2013: The Obama administration released for the first time the names of 46 men it wants to detain indefinitely at Guantánamo without charge or trial.   June 21, 1993: Guantánamo’s Camp Bulkeley, an “HIV prison camp” according to a Federal judge, closes as the last Haitian refugees detained there arrive for resettlement in…

In 2009 I published a scholarly history of the Guantánamo naval base entitled Guantánamo USA: The Untold History of America’s Cuban Outpost.   It took six years of research and writing to produce and can be found in college and university libraries across the United States.  Yet today I confess that I do not understand why our political leaders…

June 12, 2013: A group of leading physicians published a charge to doctors working at Guantánamo to refuse participation in the U.S. military’s force-feeding program. In addition to arguing that the practice “unambiguously violates medical ethics,” they also labeled the detention center a “medical ethics free zone.” June 12, 1993: Haitian refugees being held at…