UCSB Professor Lisa Hajjar to Give Plous Award Lecture, 'Torture and the Future,' Monday, May 3

Lisa Hajjar, winner of UCSB's 2003 Harold J. Plous Memorial Award, will give the honorary lecture that accompanies the award Monday, May 3 at 4 p.m. in Corwin Pavilion.

Hajjar, who teaches in UCSB's Law and Society Program, will discuss "Torture and the Future."

The lecture is free and open to the public.

In her talk, Hajjar will describe the paradox of torture as both legitimate and common, and will argue that recent relegitimization of torture as a tactic in the "war on terror" has put the most fundamental principles of human rights in jeopardy.

The Harold J. Plous Memorial Award was established in 1957 to honor the late Harold Plous, an assistant professor of economics. The award is given annually to an assistant professor or instructor who has demonstrated outstanding performance by creative action or contribution to the intellectual life of the campus and community.

An expert on the Middle East, Hajjar earned a bachelors degree in international relations from Tufts University, and followed it with a masters in Arab studies from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in sociology from The American University. She was a visiting assistant professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania from 1995 to 1999 and a visiting professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga. from 1999 to 2001.

Hajjar joined the UCSB faculty as an assistant professor in 2001 and was recently promoted to associate professor.

Her most recent research, which the Plous search committee called "groundbreaking," looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.