UNC's Fitzhugh Brundage to Present 'Cruelty, Torture, and the Making of a Human Rights Crisis on the Southern Border' Oct. 23

Prize-winning historian Fitzhugh Brundage, the William Umstead Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present "Cruelty, Torture, and the Making of a Human Rights Crisis on the Southern Border of the U.S." from 4-5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 23 in SL 140.

Brundage's most recent book, "Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition," was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2019.

In his presentation, Brundage will discuss the semantics of torture, the public debates over torture and mistreatment of asylum seekers on the southern border, and how this mistreatment comes from both an absence of effective oversight and through the use of inflammatory rhetoric that gave federal agents license to abuse detainees even though no official order was given to do so.

Sponsored by the WWU departments of History, Sociology, Political Science, Global Humanities and Religions, the Honors Program and Provost's Office, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.