Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Nicholas Kristof will be among the speakers at a local symposium on the connections between the Beijing Olympics and the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Sponsored by student organizations at Ithaca College and Cornell University, “Dream for Darfur: A Two-Day Academic Symposium on the World’s Darkest Olympics” will take place on Saturday, April 5, and Monday, April 7. All of the events are free and open to the public.
The symposium will emphasize the constructive role that China can play in ending the ongoing atrocities in Darfur. The program is tied to a national movement called the Dream for Darfur Olympic Torch Relay, which has also traveled internationally to countries with a history of genocide and mass atrocities. The movement aims to urge China—as Sudan’s chief diplomatic sponsor, major weapons provider and largest foreign investor and trade partner as well as host of the 2008 Summer Olympics—to use its unique position to lead the world in bringing an end to the ongoing violence and humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
Events on Saturday will feature presentations by Adam Sterling, director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force and star of the documentary Darfur Now; and Mohamed Yahya, executive director of the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy. Sterling and Yahya will speak at noon in Textor 102 on the IC campus and at 2:30 p.m. in the HEC Auditorium at Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall.
The symposium will culminate on Monday with talks by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof at 4:30 p.m. in Cornell’s Anabel Taylor Hall Auditorium and at 6:30 p.m. in Textor 102. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, earned a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their coverage of China’s pro-democracy student movement and the related Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. In 2006 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary “for his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”
The symposium is jointly sponsored by Ithaca College’s chapter of STAND (Students Take Action Now: Darfur) and Cornell’s anti-genocide group STARS. It is funded in part by several programs and organizations at Ithaca College and Cornell.
For more information, e-mail stand@ithaca.edu or contact Rachel Merkin at (617) 470-1324 or Mandy Kessler at (617) 939-4932.
