The Monmouth University Council of Endowed Chairs is pleased to announce that Johanna Foster, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology and Helen McMurray Bennett Endowed Chair of Social Ethics, will deliver the inaugural lecture in a series of talks featuring the work of Monmouth University’s endowed chairs.
The lecture, “‘What Did ISIS Do to You?’ Media Ethics and the Problematic Reporting on Yazidi Survivors of Sexual Violence,” will be held Monday, Feb. 25, 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall 104. Refreshments will be available beginning at 4 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public, and students are encouraged to attend.
In 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) brutally attacked the Yazidi people living in towns and villages throughout the Sinjar region of Iraq. The assault was designed to destroy the religious minority group through rape, mass executions, and forced religious conversions. Militants killed an estimated 3,100 Yazidis, mostly men and boys, and abducted another 6,400, predominantly women and children. While thousands still remain in captivity, months after the attack, thousands of women escaped, and journalists from around the world raced to cover their harrowing experiences as torture survivors.
In this lecture, Foster presents the findings from her collaborative research project on the ways in which reporters in these early months after the attack violated basic ethical standards for reporting on sexual violence in conflict zones, as well as Yazidi women’s own perceptions of the impact of the media frenzy.
This lecture is sponsored by the Monmouth University Council of Endowed Chairs. For information please contact Kristin Bluemel, Ph.D., Wayne D. McMurray Endowed Chair in the Humanities, at kbluemel@monmouth.edu.