The Tenth Annual Henry Steele Commager Lecture at Greenfield Community College on October 17 will focus on national security and human rights issues in the decade since September 11, 2001. Tina Monshipour Foster, Executive Director of the International Justice Network (IJN), will present "National Security and Human Rights under the Obama Administration" and discuss IJN's work to expose civil liberties and human rights abuses by the United States government in secret prisons around the world. The Commager Lecture series commemorates Henry Steele Commager, one of the country's pre-eminent historians and a long-time professor at Amherst College, and focuses on themes of democracy, civil liberties, and civil rights. Commager was a strong supporter of community colleges and donated many of his books to GCC. The College used funds from the sale of the books to create the lecture series and Commager's widow, Mary Commager, serves on the committee that chooses each year's speaker. The Commager Lecture will take place Monday, October 17 at Noon at the College's Stinchfield Lecture Hall on the GCC Main Campus and is free and open to all.

Tina Monshipour Foster is the founder and Executive Director of the International Justice Network. The International Justice Network is a non-profit organization that provides legal assistance to survivors of human rights abuses and their families, advocates for universal human rights, and promotes the rule of law through a network of legal experts, non-governmental organizations, and local activists across the globe. Ms. Foster serves as lead counsel in IJN's litigation on behalf of detainees imprisoned without charge at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and other international human rights cases against the United States government involving enforced disappearances, torture, rendition, and prolonged arbitrary detention. In addition to her work at IJN, Ms. Foster also represents corporations, non-profits, and individuals who have been targeted or profiled in national security investigations in her private practice at the Law Office of Tina M. Foster. During 2008-09, also worked at Yale Law School as Litigation Coordinator for the National Litigation Project of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, where she advised and facilitated cooperation among litigators from across the United States working to remedy violations of international human rights and domestic constitutional law. From November 2004 to May 2006, Foster was an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights ("CCR") and Counsel for CCR's Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. She is a graduate of Boston University (BA), BU's Modern British Studies Program at St. Anne's College, Oxford University, and Cornell Law School (JD).

Foster's talk will focus on the erosion of civil liberties, human rights, and the rule of law that has occurred due to U.S. actions since September 11, 2011. Former President Bush's administration initiated, and President Obama's administration has continued, policies that include indefinite detention of innocent people and the creation and expansion of secret U.S. prisons in other countries. While many people have heard of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, most have not heard of similar prisons in other countries. A U.S. prison in Bagram, Afghanistan had 200 detainees during the Bush Administration, and now has over 2,000 detainees under the Obama Administration. No formal legal charges have been pressed against those detainees. The U.S. government states that no court has jurisdiction over the Bagram prison. Foster, the staff of IJN, and other organizations argue that U.S. courts should have jurisdiction over people detained in U.S. military prisons in other countries, and that people held in these prisons should be treated humanely and have access to legal counsel and due process.

For more information about the Henry Steele Commager Lecture Series, contact Allen J. Davis, Greenfield Community College Foundation, at 413-775-1601 or .

For information about the International Justice Network, visit their website at www.ijnetwork.org

By Mary McClintock, '82

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