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Livestreamed Conversation with Journalists in Exile Launches New Project Kronika

A livestreamed discussion marks the public launch of Kronika, a joint civic tech project of Bard College and PEN America that builds tools to protect endangered media against state censorship. Kronika’s purpose is to expand the Russian Independent Media Archive’s mission on a global scale by digitally preserving decades of independent journalism that is otherwise at risk of erasure. Funded by the Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust, Kronica will utilize AI-assisted bilingual archiving, practical tools for newsrooms in exile, and partnerships that keep the public record accessible to safeguard journalism and public memory wherever they are at risk. 

The talk, “We’ve Seen This Before: Lessons from Exile on Recognizing Authoritarianism,” takes place on Wednesday, December 10, at 6 pm, and centers around a conversation with a founder of the project M. Gessen, András Pethő (Direkt36, Hungary), Ramón Zamora (El Periódico/Central America Independent Media Archive, Guatemala), and Sevgi Akarçeşme (Türkiye, in exile in New York)—journalists and thinkers who witnessed the rise of authoritarian regimes firsthand. 

Moderated by PEN America’s Liesl Gerntholtz, managing director of the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center, the conversation will explore the panelists’ experiences as journalists and Kronika as a tool to protect public memory. The event is also a call to connection—inviting journalists in exile and American journalists to work together to track and document the warning signs of autocracy.

Watch the Livestream on Wednesday, December 10 at 6 pm EST: journalism.cuny.edu/live/ 
 

Post Date: 12-09-2025

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Francine Prose for the Guardian: “Ali Faqirzada is an Afghan refugee. He deserves to stay in America”

Francine Prose, distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, has published an article in the Guardian in defense of Bard Baccalaureate student and Afghan asylum seeker Ali Faqirzada ’28, who was detained by ICE on October 14 just after he had been found to have a viable claim for asylum. The Faqirzada family, who had assisted the American government and NATO with projects to improve the lives of Afghan women, fled the Taliban after the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. “In a more reasonable, more compassionate country, the immigration official would have walked around the table, shaken Faqirzada’s hand, and thanked him for how much he has done on behalf of his people and our own,” Prose writes. “But that is not what happened.”

Efforts by Bard College to free Faqirzada—led by president Leon Botstein, himself a refugee from the Nazis—along with federal and state elected officials and the Episcopal Diocese of New York, have been complicated by a November 29 government ruling that has paused the final approval of asylum applications. The ruling, which comes in the aftermath of a Washington DC shooting of two national guard soldiers by an Afghan national who had worked with the CIA, includes a pause on the issuing of green cards to Afghans already residing in the US. “A genial, kind-hearted, highly motivated computer science student and hospital security guard should not be held accountable for someone else’s crime,” Prose writes. “Nor should the entire Afghan community.”

Post Date: 12-04-2025