Ambassador Faily delivered the keynote address for a conference at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on the legacy of dictatorship in Iraq. The conference, entitled, “Totalitarianism in Saddam’s Iraq: Documents as a Window to a Dictatorship,” centered around a collection of over 10 million documents housed at the Hoover Institution that were originally recovered from the Headquarters of the Ba’ath Party in Baghdad in 2003.
In his keynote address, Ambassador Faily thanked the Iraq Memory Foundation and the Hoover Institution for their invaluable work throughout the years to ensure that the records were preserved and made available for researchers and scholars worldwide. The Ambassador stressed the importance of the records being maintained not only as a testimony to the evil that was inflicted upon Iraq throughout the years of dictatorship, but also as a means for Iraqis to strengthen their commitment to the democratic process by taking lessons from Saddam's destructive legacy.
Conference participants included the Hoover Institution’s Dr. Larry Diamond and Dr. Eric Wakin, and representatives from the Iraq Memory Foundation including Professor Kanan Makiya, Dr. Hassan Mneimneh, and Mr. Mustafa Al-Kadhimi. Panelists noted the immense value of the records beyond the Iraqi context and stressed the need for continued support for the work of the Hoover Institution.
To read Ambassador Faily's full remarks, click here.
To read Ambassador Faily's remarks in Arabic, click here.
You can read more about the Hoover Institution’s Ba'ath Party records here and the work of the Iraq Memory Foundation here.
While visiting Stanford University, Ambassador Faily also sat down with The Daily ahead of the conference to discuss the event as well as the Iraqi Embassy’s relationship with Stanford. Read the Ambassador’s interview with Nitish Kulkarni here.