You are cordially invited to attend an IN-PERSON lecture event:
The Halabja Massacre: Remembering, Reflecting and Rebuilding
Speaker
Dr. Yerevan Saeed
Date/Time
Monday, September 15, 2025
5:00 – 6:00 PM EDT
Location
The Institute of World Politics
1521 16th St NW, Washington D.C., 20036
Getting to campus
About the Lecture
Dr. Saeed will speak about the Halabja Massacre that occurred on March 16, 1988—a chemical weapons attack under the direction of Ali Hassan al-Majid (“Chemical Ali”), a cousin of Saddam Hussein. The attack claimed between 7,000 and 10,000 civilian lives. Dr. Saeed will discuss the lasting impact on Kurdish and Iraqi history, its role in the discussion of genocide, and his own experience as a survivor of the attack.
About the Speaker
Yerevan Saeed is the Barzani Scholar in Residence and the Director of the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace at American University’s School of International Service and a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He is a TEDx speaker and former lecturer at the University of Kurdistan Hewler. Saeed previously was a visiting scholar and research associate at AGSIW. He is a political analyst focusing on security, political, and energy issues in the Middle East, with a particular emphasis on Iraq, Turkey, Iran, the Gulf, and the Levant. He has served as White House correspondent for Kurdish Rudaw TV, and his work has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Diplomatic Courier, the Washington Institute’s Fikra Forum, and Majalla magazine, among others. Saeed has also been interviewed by Voice of America, NPR, CNN, Voice of Russia, and various Kurdish media outlets.
From 2009–2013, he worked with Stratfor and previously contributed reporting and translation work to The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, BBC, and The Guardian in Iraq. Saeed holds a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, with a focus on Middle East studies and international negotiation and conflict resolution. He received his PhD from the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. He speaks Kurdish and Arabic and has a command of Farsi.
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