Six writers at risk discuss their work during gathering at Harvard
Crafting compelling narratives and gripping stories can be anguish for many writers in the best of times. But for a special group gathered at Harvard’s Lamont Library, getting their thoughts down can be just the start of their problems, and often the cause of them. Six writers dedicated to pursuing freedom of expression, sometimes under threat of harassment, detention, torture, and even death, spoke last Wednesday at a session co-sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Series on Violence and Non-Violence and Harvard’s Scholars at Risk Program. Yet despite the risks attached to their work, the scholars, authors, and activists from Cuba, Ethiopia, Syria, Cambodia, and Nigeria agreed that writing is their life force. Beekan Guluma Erena uses his pen to shine a light on the plight of his Oromo people, the largest ethnic majority in Ethiopia, and long sublimated by the federal government. Repeatedly beaten and jailed for speaking out, Erena, who last year was a scholar at risk supported by the Hutchins Center for African...