Date:
Location:
"Experts in Cruelty: Interrogation in Abu Ghraib and After"
Speaker:
Steve Caton, Khalid Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud Professor of Contemporary Arab Studies, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University.
Lunch is provided if you RSVP via our online form by Wednesday, February 25.
Contact:
Shana Rabinowich
shana_rabinowich@hks.harvard.edu
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.
Abstract:
When the photographs of US abuses of detainees in Abu Ghraib became known in 2003, the world was shocked to learn that the US military was engaged in what the Geneva Conventions and other treaties to which the US is a signatory would call torture. Of course, it later became clear that this prison contained a “black site,” just one of many in the world where “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” were practiced, and that what happened in Abu Ghraib was part of a global phenomenon. One way officials and others have criticized what happened in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere is by claiming these abuses were committed by “amateurs” and not “experts,” calling for a review of interrogation techniques and for a professionalization of them. This discourse is examined in this paper. It raises interesting questions of what such a distinction seems to allow and disallow in the way of interrogation techniques. I will try to look at this question by examining the “manual” as a guideline issued by the CIA and the US military over a period of years to try to train interrogation personnel. I will look at the way interrogation is constructed in these manuals and throughout I will look at the “expert” as a key figure in the interrogation process.
