The Institute for Human Sciences at Boston University cordially invites you to a special event:

Monday, December 4, 2006, 6:00 PM TONIGHT!!!

Post-Totalitarian Societies: the Case of Albania

Fatos Lubonja

Editor and publisher of Pepjekja ("Endeavor"), Albania's leading critical social/political journal, author, human rights activist, and former political prisoner

Respondent: Michael Kaufman

Author and former New York Times reporter, foreign correspondent, columnist, and editor

Colloquium Room

Boston University Photonics Center

8 Saint Mary’s Street, 9th Floor

Fatos Lubonja is one of Albania’s most outspoken human rights activists. He graduated from Tirana University in theoretical physics in 1974 and was arrested in the same year and sentenced to seven years imprisonment for "agitation and propaganda against the state" because of his political writings. In 1979, while serving his first sentence, he was charged again and sentenced to another ten years in prison and labor camps. He was released in 1991 with most of Albania's political prisoners and co-founded Albania's first ever human rights group, which later became the Albanian Helsinki Committee. Since 1994 he has been both editor and publisher of Pepjekja ("Endeavor"), Albania's leading critical social/political journal. He is the author of three books, including a novel he wrote while in prison.

Michael Kaufman spent close to forty years at The New York Times as a reporter, foreign correspondent, columnist, and editor. He has won the George Polk Award for foreign reporting and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is the author of six books, including, most recently, a biography of financier George Soros.

Reception to follow

All events are free and open to the public

Inquiries: 617-686-6872 or ihs@bu.edu

See BU TODAY interview with Fatos Lubonja: What Albania Wants from the World:

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/news/?dept=4&id=42066&template=4