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This talk has been postponed. Rescheduling is currently being considered and further details, including a possible new date and time, will be announced soon. For the latest updates, check the event webpage linked below.
The Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School presents
Zohra Drif
Algerian freedom fighter and Senator on Algeria's Council of the Nation, 2001-2016; author, Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter from Just Word Books
Zohra Drif is a hero of Algeria’s war of national liberation. Born in 1934 in Tiaret, in western Algeria, she studied law at the University of Algiers before joining the National Liberation Front. As a core member of the movement’s armed wing in Algiers, she conducted or supported several high-profile operations that advanced the revolutionaries’ struggle to draw international attention to France’s abuses against the local population and the Algerians’ need for freedom. Ultimately captured by the French and condemned to twenty years of forced labor for “terrorism”, she spent five years in prison in Algeria and France, during which she continued her legal studies and her activism. In 1962, upon her country’s independence, she was freed from prison, and was soon elected to Algeria’s first National Constituent Assembly. She co-founded an organization to support youth orphaned in the liberation struggle, and went on to practice as a criminal lawyer in Algiers for several decades. A senator in Algeria’s Council of the Nation from 2001 to 2016, she served as a senate vice president from 2003 onward.
Moderator: Professor William Granara, Director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies