The Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination's Project on Gender in the Global Community co-sponsored a lecture, "A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution," by author and journalist Samar Yazbek on Tuesday, September 25 at 4:30 p.m. in 219 Aaron Burr Hall on the Princeton University campus. The lecture was co-sponsored with the Trans-Regional Institute, Near Eastern Studies, and the Women's Center. The event was free and open to the public.

Samar Yazbek was an active and outspoken critic of Syria's regime long before the outbreak of violence. Her prominence as a high-profile Alawite journalist and author made her criticism all the more searing. She was denounced by her family and clan, and harassed by the security services. As the brutality mounted, she was forced to flee Syria with her young daughter and to go into hiding.

A Woman in the Crossfire, Yazbek's most recent book, is an insider's account of Syria's bloody revolution and the Assad regime's attempt to maintain its control. Though herself a member of the ruling Alawite minority, Yazbek has produced a chronicle of the uprising that has already claimed more than 9,000 lives. In her diaries, Samar Yazbek describes the uprising that started in Dar'a in March 2011, and the brutal response that followed. Her own observations are interspersed with the stories of those at the forefront of the revolution, whose accounts she has dedicated herself to collecting. These testimonies provide a wholly unique insight into the conflict, unlike anything else yet to emerge from the chaos and tragedy that enshroud Syria. 

Samar Yazbek was born in Jableh in 1970. She studied literature before beginning her career as a journalist