Former Guantanamo Detainee Moazzam Begg to Speak at Yale Event on 9/22

New Haven, CT: With university students back on campus, but many COViD-19 restrictions in place for in person gatherings, student organizations are developing creative ways to host events. The Yale Muslim Students Association and the Yale Arab Students Association are bringing attention to civil rights and social justice issues impacting Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians since the September 11^th attacks through a panel sponsored by the Belonging at Yale initiative. The program is part of the Social Justice in National Security Forum: 20 Years Post 9/11 to be held virtually on September 22nd at 7:30 PM (Eastern).

The panel explores the disparate impacts of mass surveillance on communities, which are already disadvantaged on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, and class. The broad reach of government and corporate surveillance programs follows a history of suspicious searches and unnecessary detentions and incarceration. This panel of experts will discuss the intersections of racial profiling and mass surveillance in the context of anti-black racism along with anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias. The discussion will also look at the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Panel speakers will also include those who have been directly impacted by racial and religious profiling and surveillance.

Panelists include Sahar Aziz, Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, Rutgers Law School; Moazzam Begg, Outreach Director, CAGE; Author, Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar; Gary Okihiro, Visiting Professor, American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, Yale University; and Saleema Snow, Professor of Law, University of the District of Columbia. The event will be moderated by Rahma Ahmed, Solomon Center Student Fellow for Health Law & Policy, Yale University, and Shaezmina Khan, Global Affairs and Human Rights Scholar, Yale University.

This event is sponsored by Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM), Belonging at Yale, the Yale Arab Students Association, Yale Muslim Students Association, Yale Muslim Law Students Association, Yale International Relations Association, the American Constitution Society at YLS, and the American Bar Association’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice.

Register for Zoom here: https://bit.ly/3AoeD65