In 1992, when he read about the burning of the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina, András Riedlmayer, bibliographer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the Harvard Fine Arts Library, knew it was an attack on more than physical objects. It was what he later testified to being “cultural heritage destruction”: intentional and unnecessary destruction of sites and records that act as a community’s collective memory. Read about his years of research into this cultural destruction and his expert testimony against Serbian nationalist Slobodan Milosevic during the International Criminal...

About 11 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of a civil war in 2011 – including a family that settled in Silver Spring. To bring awareness to the eight-year anniversary of the conflict’s beginning, the brother-sister duo of Mouhanad Al-Rifay and CMES AM candidate Oula Alrifai are screening their documentary about child refugees from their home country this month in the town that took them in 13 years ago. “Tomorrow’s Children,” released in 2018, was directed by Al-...

The 2019 Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture, "Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad in Conversation with Jennifer Leaning," took place on April 3 at the Memorial Church at Harvard. Nadia Murad is the corecipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, and is a leading advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence. Murad’s peaceful life was savagely interrupted in 2014 when Daesh attacked her homeland in Sinjar, with the intention of ethnically cleansing Iraq of all Yazidis. Like many minority groups, the Yazidis have carried the weight of historical persecution. Women in particular...

Nadia Murad came to Harvard as a survivor of genocide under ISIS, an advocate for victims of sexual violence, and the first Iraqi citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her talk at the Memorial Church, as part of the Weatherhead Center’s Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture Series, co-sponsored this year by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, focused on her personal journey and how her ordeal turned her into an activist. Read more about her talk in the...