September 7, 2004
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
Veteran correspondent Chris Hedges delivers the timely lecture War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning: The Truth about War at UCSB Campbell Hall
Summary Facts:
- Chris Hedges
- War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning: The Truth about War
- Hedges is a veteran New York Times correspondent
- Hedges shared a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of global terrorism
- Monday, October 11
- 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- General public $10 / UCSB students $8
- Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535
Chris Hedges, veteran war correspondent who has covered conflicts around the world including in Bosnia, El Salvador, Israel and Iraq, will deliver the public lecture War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning: The Truth about War, based on his National Book Critics Circle Award finalist nominee of the same name, on Monday, October 11 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall.
In his lecture Hedges will examine war-making in general, exploring the psychological and sociological reasons that nations opt to fight, full-knowing the devastation that war incurs. Hedges brings to bear not only his own decade and a half at the front lines but also intensive research in history and philosophy, weaving in ideas from great thinkers like Thucydides, Catullus and Freud. The talk is based on his book that The New York Times called “brilliant, thoughtful, timely and unsettling...[its] greatest merit is that it will rattle jingoists, pacifists, moralists, nihilists, politicians and professional soldiers equally.”
In an interview on PBS 13 New York’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program Hedges said, “I’m like my friends in Sarajevo. They all sat around at the end of the war, and they didn’t miss the suffering and the death; but they also realized that this was probably the fullest moment in their life. There was a kind of nostalgia for that, a sense of that comradeship, a sense of that excitement. Yet that kind of lifestyle or that kind of rush can probably never be re-created....War has marked most of my 15 years abroad. I’ve been in ambushes. I’ve been strafed by MIGs, pounded by very heavy artillery in Sarajevo—155 Howitzers, 90-millimeter tank rounds. I was shot at by Serb snipers, shot at by Israeli snipers. I’ve seen far too much of violent death.”
Hedges is also the author of What Every Person Should Know about War. This fascinating book offers a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Devoid of rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges poses dozens of questions that young soldiers might ask about combat, and then answers them by quoting from medical and psychological studies. He allows U.S. military documentation of the brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat to speak for itself.
Chris Hedges joined the staff of The New York Times in 1990 and previously worked for the Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. He is Lecturer in the Council of Humanities and Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Hedges was a member of The New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism.
In UCSB Arts & Lectures’ on-going effort to make events accessible to all who wish to enjoy them, this lecture will be signed. American Sign Language interpretation is made possible by the California Arts Council in collaboration with the National Arts and Disability Center and by the Santa Barbara Foundation’s Access Theatre Endowment Fund.
Courtesy of Borders, books by Chris Hedges will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
Chris Hedges is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures in association with UCSB’s American Cultures and Global Contexts Center and the Center for Creativity and Innovation. Part of the Global Forces in the Post-Cold War World lecture series presented with the Global and International Studies Program and the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
Tickets for the event are $10 for the general public and $8 for UCSB students. They are on sale now and can also be purchased at the door, if still available.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.