Monday | November 6 | 7 PM
 
American University School of Public Affairs

Kerwin Hall, Room 1

Reception to Follow

Natan Sharansky was born in Donetsk, Ukraine when it was part of the USSR. He was a leading Soviet dissident and Human Rights activist. He was imprisoned by the Soviets and sentenced to thirteen years of forced labor. Following a series of hunger strikes while in prison, and an international Human Rights campaign to win his freedom, he was released in 1986 in an international prisoner exchange. After his release he moved to Israel, was involved in the Human Rights campaign that helped facilitate the collapse of the Soviet Union, served in the Israeli Knesset and was twice a Minister in the Government of Israel. An author of four books, Sharansky will speak about the lessons he learned in the Soviet Gulag about combatting Russian authoritarianism and military aggression and how they might be relevant to combatting Vladimir Putin and Russian aggression in Ukraine.

David Makovsky is the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at the The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel Relations. He was deeply involved in the movement to free Sharansky as President of the World Union of Jewish Students.