Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Confronting the Unthinkable: Understanding the Uyghur Genocide in China

Mon, September 11, 2023
Dinner Program
Nury Turkel

Nury Turkel, Commissioner at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and author of No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs, shares his personal story and draws from his decades of experience as an attorney and human rights advocate to shed light on how the Chinese Communist Party has engaged in trans-national repression and technological surveillance, and employed forced labor in detention camps to perpetuate genocide in Xinjiang.

Nury Turkel is an attorney, author, foreign policy expert, and advocate with nearly two decades of experience working in the intersection of law, business, government, and the human rights community. As a rights advocate, he has led efforts to raise the profile of the Uyghur cause, previously as the president of the Uyghur American Association and now as Chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, which he co-founded in 2003. In May 2020, he was appointed by Congress as a Commissioner at the U.S. Commissioner on International Religious Freedom, where he served as Chair. In 2020, he was in TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World List and in 2021, he was listed as one of Fortune's 50 Greatest Leaders. In June 2021, he received the inaugural Notre Dame Prize for Religious Liberty. Last September, he was awarded the “Global Soul Award” by Jewish World Watch. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where he works on US foreign policy and national security issues. He is also a Senior Advisor at Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue. In July 2023, Notre Dame Law School appointed him as a Senior Legal Fellow. He holds Juris Doctor and a Master of Arts in International Relations degrees from American University.

Turkel's Athenaeum visit is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights and the CMC Chapter of The Alexander Hamilton Society, a national organization that seeks to identify, educate, and launch young men and women into foreign policy and national security careers.

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
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Claremont, CA 91711

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