RELEASED: April 25, 2001

DANVILLE, KY—Renowned civil rights attorney Abdeen Jabara will present a lecture entitled Immigration and Civil Rights: Secret Evidence in the Struggle Against Terrorism. The free lecture will take place on May 7 at 7:30 p.m. in the Crounse Bijou Theater on the Centre College Campus.

Mr. Jabara will discuss the practice of secret evidence used against immigrants in the United States who seek political asylum and relief from torture, under the international convention on civil and political rights. Issues debated will be the breadth of civil rights, due process, and applicable international treaties.

Nayef Samhat, assistant professor of government and international relations at Centre states, "Abdeen Jabara's activity has challenged the extraordinary and sometimes quite arbitrary power of the government to engage in surveillance and harassment campaigns against citizens and immigrants alike. His work has been instrumental to strengthening and expanding the sphere of civil rights in America."

During the mid 1970s, Mr. Jabara aided in exposing the Nixon administration's "Operation Boulder" program again Arabs and Arab-Americans which included deportations, surveillance and harassment campaigns. He was directly involved in the issue, himself the victim of a coordinated campaign of government surveillance. In 1985, he won a long legal battle that forced the FBI to destroy the records it maintained concerning his exercise of activities protected by the First Amendment.

Mr. Jabara has written numerous articles and lectured extensively at universities around the U.S. on civil rights and foreign policy issues. He is the author of a monograph on Armistice Law and has co-edited a book on Middle East politics. He is past president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the largest grass-roots Arab-American organization dedicated to defending the political rights and promoting the cultural heritage of the more than three million Americans of Arab descent. Abdeen Jabara currently practices law in New York City.

- end -

Back to News and Events Home Page