Guantánamo Public Memory Project: Why Remember Guantánamo?
GTMO Before 9-11, What Now, and What’s Next

Exhibit Opening Reception: December 13, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
NYU King Juan Carlos Center, 53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012

National Dialogue:

December 13th, 9:30am - 4:00pm
Barnard College/Columbia University
Held Lecture Hall, Room 304

December 14th , 9:30am - 5:30pm
NYU King Juan Carlos Center
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012

Why remember Guantánamo? Join a national dialogue on GTMO's long history and how it matters today. Hear from people who worked, lived, served, or were held at GTMO from the Cold War through the War on Terror; and from the historians, activists, artists, and archivists saving their stories.

In recent years, Guantánamo has become an international symbol of torture, detention, national security, and conflict. But the US Naval Station in Cuba, or GTMO, opened more than a century before 9-11. It has represented both freedom and confinement: the price of Cuba's independence from Spain, a "cactus curtain" containing communism, a treasured community for military families, a beacon of liberty behind barbed wire for refugees. New facilities at GTMO are under construction even amid continuing legal battles over the 166 “enemy combatants” held there. How did we get here? What should happen next? Why do we keep forgetting Guantánamo and what happens when we do?

The event will launch the Guantánamo Public Memory Project's first exhibit, developed collaboratively by over 100 students from a range of communities across the country. Opening December 13th in the Kimmel Windows at NYU, the exhibit will travel to at least 9 other cities around the country. Turning to GTMO's long history, the exhibit grapples with the deeply contested questions around this place and its impact on people and policies around the world.

Event Sponsors:

New York University: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Science, Humanities Institute, Master's College, Provost's Global Research Initiatives, and King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center; Columbia University: Heyman Center for the Humanities, Institute for Latin American Studies, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, and University Seminars; and the New York Council on the Humanities.