Documenting the History of Terrorism: The Destruction and the Revival of Mosul
Date & Time: October 12, 2018 | 01:00 AM – 01:00 AM
Location: 112 Kern Graduate Center
You are cordially invited to a public lecture by Omar Mohammed, Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellow at Yale University. Sponsored by the Center for Global Studies, Department of History, and the Middle East Studies Committee.
Omar Mohammed, a native of Mosul, Iraq, was present when the Islamic State (or “ISIS”) forces occupied the city in June 2014. He had been teaching history at the University of Mosul and decided that, for the sake of future historians, he would record the Islamic State’s activities, including the destruction of local monuments, persecution of religious minorities, execution of political dissidents, and other atrocities, at the risk of his own life. These reports were published in English and Arabic in an anonymous monthly blog called “The Mosul Eye.” When ISIS identified Omar as its author and threatened to kill him, he escaped with his hard drive to Turkey and later gained asylum in France, where he became a research associate for the Centre d’Etudes Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques, et Centrasiatiques and also a Ph.D. candidate in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Soon after revealing his identity as the Mosul Eye, he was admitted to Yale University’s Greenberg World Fellows Program for the fall 2018 semester.