22nd Annual Amos Perlmutter Memorial Lecture

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.

Saul Newman is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC. He received his PhD in 1989 from the Department of Politics, Princeton University. Since then he has taught at American University and at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. His publications include Ethnoregional Conflict in Democracies as well as journal articles on nationalism, ethnic politics and terrorism. Presently, he is conducting research on evolving nationalisms in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel and their impact on resolving disputes in each location.