KEYNOTES & SPECIAL SPEAKERS

Mansoor Adayfi is a writer, advocate, and former Guantánamo Bay prisoner. He spent nearly fifteen years without charge in U.S. custody, including eight years in solitary confinement. Originally from Yemen, he was released to Serbia in 2016. Since then, he has focused on continuing his education and on writing about his experiences. Adayfi’s writings have been published in The New York Times. These include “In Our Prison on the Sea” and “Taking Marriage Class at Guantánamo Bay.” He is also author of the essay “Did We Survive Torture?,” which is included in the edited volume Witnessing Torture; Perspectives of Torture Survivors and Human Rights Workers (2018). Hachette Books is the publisher of his 2021 memoir, Don’t Forget Us Here .

Sami Al-Haj holds a master’s degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor’s of Arts in Political Science from Poona University, India, where he studied from 1989 to 1992. He joined Al Jazeera Media Network in October 2000 as a journalist and is now the Director of its Center for Public Liberties and Human Rights. Under his stewardship, the Center has become a prominent advocate for press freedom, human rights monitoring, and the promotion of civil liberties worldwide. Al-Haj’s knowledge has been shaped by an ordeal that inflected debates about human rights and the rule of law at the global level—spending seven years detained without charge at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He was finally released in 2008. That same year, he received a Special Award from the Association for International Broadcasting and International News Safety Institute, and in 2009 the Fondazione Festival Pucciniano: named him International Reporter of the Year. His experience of incarceration and the events leading up to it have made him a compelling symbol of the perils facing journalists in the post 9/11 era.

Lakhdar Boumediene was born and raised in Algeria, and as an adult he worked for various humanitarian causes. Boumediene was imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay from January 2002 to May 15, 2009.  Like others, he was detained and interrogated, but not charged. He was also the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush (2008), a U.S. Supreme Court case that he won. The court determined that Guantánamo detainees and other foreign nationals have the right to file writs of habeas corpus in U.S. federal courts. Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir are the authors of Witnesses of the Unseen: Seven Years in Guantanamo (2017).

Dr. Diana Murtaugh Coleman, a former Luce Fellow in Indonesia, is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at Northern Arizona University. Her research, focused on contemporary Islam, U.S. militarism, and carceral issues includes numerous talks, presentations, and publications. She is the author of a chapter in Guantánamo: The Humanities Respond; the article “El Sur También Existe: Imagining futures” in Cultural Dynamics, and articles in two special issues of Sargasso: the 2017-18 Guantánamo: What’s Next? Issue and the 2020-21 Camps, (In)Justice & Solidarity issue. She has conducted research, presented and participated in dozens of conferences, led panels and workshops, and guest lectured nationally and internationally, in the U.S., France, Morocco, Germany, South Africa, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina, Uruguay, Bangladesh, Austria, India (virtually), and the UK. She was a Humanities Scholar and presenter for the 2023 TOM KIEFER: El Sueño Americano / The American Dream exhibit at the Coconino Center for the Arts and recently completed training with the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program at Temple University. As NAU’s 2024/25 College of Arts and Letters teacher of the year and NAU’s Interns to Scholars program 2024/25 Mentor of the Year, Dr. Coleman is deeply committed to empowering her students and to reaching broader publics beyond walls and borders.

Abdellatif Nasser was born and raised in Casablanca City, Morocco. After graduating from high school in mathematical science, he studied at the University of Science. For nearly twenty years, between 2002 and 2021, he was detained at the U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was never charged with a crime or tried, but like many others, he was repeatedly interrogated, tortured, and force-fed. He turned to hunger strikes because they were the only means by which he could resist soldiers’ harassment and arbitrary detention. He emerged as a block leader and for years pushed for educational opportunities for his fellow detainees. This led to his nickname, “the Minister of Education.” His story was widely covered in the New York Times, the Guardian, and in the 6-part NPR series “The Other Latif.” As noted in some of these reports, during his incarceration he created a handwritten bilingual (Arabic-English) dictionary that consisted of about 2,000 entries. In the two and a half years since his release, he has studied independently and completed different online courses in a variety of subjects.

Dr. Elithet Silva-Martínez has been with the Beatriz Lassalle Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Puerto Rico since 2011 and currently serves as its Interim Director. The only Latina member of the National Institute of Justice’s Research Consortium, she specializes in economic abuse and gender violence in universities, sharing her research in several countries including Ireland, Chile, and South Africa. Her collaborative work with the Center for Dominican Women led to participatory research initiatives, notably the book Narrativas de Lucha: Immigrant Women and Gender Violence in Puerto Rico. She recently won an award for her children’s story, “The Secret Dream of a Ballet Tutu,” from the Popular Education Network for Women of Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. Silva-Martínez produced the award-winning short film “Desempacando: Gender, Migration and Violence,” recognized as the best national documentary at the Enfoque International Film Festival. She has taught courses at the University of Iowa and conducted an ethnographic study with Mexican undocumented women, resulting in published work and a Feminist Manuscript Award. Additionally, she co-founded the SIEMPRE VIVAS Metro organization to support survivors of gender violence. Inspired by the stories of the women in her life—her grandmothers, mother, and daughters, Lina and Lara—Dr. Silva-Martínez continues to engage in impactful research and advocacy.

Mohamedou Ould Salahi Houbeini is a writer, advocate, and former prisoner from Mauritania. He was detained at the U.S. government’s Guantánamo Bay prison without charge for approximately fourteen years. Houbeini wrote a memoir during his incarceration, which the U.S. government declassified in 2012 with numerous redactions. An international bestseller and the first memoir to be published while the author was still detained in the naval base, it was released as Guantánamo Diary in January 2015. In 2017, a “restored edition” was published with thousands of redactions removed and new life added. The memoir was used as the basis for “The Mauritanian,” a 2021 film starring Tahar Rahim, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Jodie Foster. Slahi wrote four other books in detention, one of which he describes as being “about finding happiness in a hopeless place.” In 2021, his novel The Actual True Story of Ahmed & Zarga was published by Ohio University Press in its Modern African Writers series. At the time of this writing, he is writer-in-residence at Noord Nederlands Toneel, a Dutch theatre company.

Barhoumi Sufyian is from Algeria.  He was held in extrajudicial detention at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba for almost twenty years. There he earned a reputation for his good humor, his empathy for those who suffered, and the strong command of English that he acquired during his incarceration.  His repatriation from Guantánamo Bay was arranged during the Obama administration but then delayed for about five years.  He was reunited with his family in 2022 and is working hard to rebuild his life; he is committed to living a life based on honesty, kindness, and forgiveness. However, the stigma associated with his incarceration is difficult to overcome, and his subjection to various forms of suffering that were induced by his incarceration at Guantánamo is ongoing.

Rinaldo Walcott is Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo. He holds the Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies. A writer and critic, his research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality with interests in nations, nationalisms, multiculturalism, as well as the histories of slavery, emancipation, incarceration and ongoing struggles for freedom. An interdisciplinary scholar, Walcott has edited or co-edited multiple works, and he is the author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada (Insomniac Press, 1997 with a second revised edition in 2003). He is also the author of Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora and Black Studies (Insomniac Press, 2016) and co-author of Black Life: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom (Arbeiter Ring, 2019). In 2021, Walcott published The Long Emancipation: Moving Towards Freedom (Duke University Press) and On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition (Biblioasis), which was nominated for the Heritage Toronto Book Award, longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, named a Globe and Mail Book of the Year, and listed in CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2021.