Human rights activist and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadia Murad will be the keynote speaker at Fairfield’s Annual Student Forum on Thursday, February 11 at 8 p.m. This panel discussion, part of the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts’ Open VISIONS Forum (OVF), will be moderated by College of Arts and Sciences Professor Philip Eliasoph, founding director of OVF.

As detailed in her New York Times best-selling memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, Nadia Murad was born in a farming village in northern Iraq to a family in the Yazidi community, a Kurdish religious minority. In 2014, Islamic State militants attacked her village, killing 600 men including six of her brothers. At the age of 21, Murad was captured and taken to Mosul where she was beaten, raped, and forced into the ISIS slave trade with thousands of other Yazidi women and girls.

Murad miraculously escaped her captors and now — as a refugee, a survivor of sexual violence, and a witness to unspeakable brutality — she has made it her mission to advocate for victims of human trafficking and to bring attention to the ongoing genocide in Iraq. In 2016, she became the first survivor of human trafficking to be appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Victims of Human Trafficking by the United Nations.

“I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine,” Murad said in 2018 when she was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize for her ongoing efforts to advocate for her fellow Yazidi refugees and bring the perpetrators of war crimes to justice. She is the first Iraqi to ever receive a Nobel Prize.

Among numerous other awards, Murad has also received the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize for outstanding civil society action in defense of human rights, and the Sakharov Prize for defending human rights and fundamental freedoms. She is currently the president and chairwoman of Nadia’s Initiative, an organization dedicated to rebuilding communities in crisis and advocating for survivors of sexual violence. She bravely shares her powerful story at speaking engagements around the world because, as she has said, “My story, told honestly and matter-of-factly, is the best weapon I have against terrorism, and I plan on using it until those terrorists are put on trial.” 

Hear Nadia Murad’s story via livestream on February 11 at 8 p.m., during the virtual OVF Annual Student Forum. Tickets ($20 and $10) are available at quickcenter.com. This and several upcoming premiere Quick events are free for Fairfield University students and employees, President's Circle and Bellarmine Society Members, and Quick Center Members. To become a Quick Member today, visit quickcenter.com/support or call the Box Office at 203-254-4010 or toll-free at 1-877-ARTS-396.