Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement
Albert Woodfox is a former political prisoner and human rights advocate who served 43 years in solitary confinement for a crime he didn't commit. His sentence, served in a 6-by-9-foot cell at Louisiana’s Angola Prison, is the longest solitary confinement ever endured in the United States. After decades of activism and many legal appeals, Woodfox was released from prison in February 2016. He speaks to audiences worldwide about the inhumanity of solitary confinement. Join us as Woodfox discusses his advocacy and new memoir, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope, which was recently named a finalist for the National Book Award.
Presented by the University of Chicago Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, the Human Rights Lab, and the Mass Incarceration Working Group. Cosponsored by the International House Global Voices Program and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. This event is backed by the Office of the Provost.
If you have any questions about access or to request any reasonable accommodations that will facilitate your full participation in this event, please email human-rights@uchicago.edu.
About Robert H. Kirschner, MD
The annual Robert H. Kirschner, MD, Human Rights Memorial Lecture honors the life and work of Dr. Kirschner (1940-2002), clinical associate in the Department of Pathology and Pediatrics and a founding Faculty Board member of the Human Rights Program at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Kirschner was an internationally recognized authority on forensic pathology, human rights violations, police brutality, torture, and child abuse, and an outspoken opponent of the death penalty. He also supported Asociacion Pro-Busqueda, a past project partner of the Human Rights Program, in their mission to reunite Salvadorean families with the children who disappeared or were adopted by U.S. families during El Salvador’s civil war.
Dr. Kirschner died at the University of Chicago Hospitals on September 15, 2002. Read the University news release of his passing and discover more about his work in “Bearing Witness for the Dead,” a piece from the Winter 2001 issue of Medhunters.