Dissident Voices From Gaza, Syria, & Lebanon

Fight Hate Presents

Dissident Voices From Gaza, Syria, & Lebanon: A Digital Experience From The Center For Peace Communications

April 3, 2025

6-8 PM

University of Pennsylvania—Location TBA

Learn about life on the ground in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, as dissidents from the Middle East share their insights on Hamas, Hezbollah, and other regional powers through a digital experience created by The Center For Peace Communications.

Speakers include:

Ahed Alhendi is a senior fellow at the Center for Peace Communications and a former political prisoner in his native Syria, detained in 2007 for pro-democracy activism. As a social entrepreneur, Ahed organized Syrian artists to bring hope and color back to public spaces in areas liberated from ISIS. He also developed a program that equipped artists with 3D modeling skills to create prosthetics for civilians wounded in the war. A committed voice for Arab reform and development, he is a regular guest on pan-Arab satellite channels and contributes widely to regional and international media.

Joseph Braude, President of the Center for Peace Communications, is an expert on the nexus of culture and politics in Arab societies and an active presence in the region’s media and policy debates. A graduate of Near Eastern Studies at Yale and Princeton, he developed his Arabic to broadcast quality over a seven-year stint on Moroccan national radio and added Persian to his Arabic and Hebrew as a graduate student at the University of Tehran. He is the author of five books, including Broadcasting Change: Arabic Media as a Catalyst for Liberalism and Reclamation: A Cultural Policy for Arab-Israeli Partnership.

Middle Eastern food will be served