The public is invited to attend Carleton College’s Fall 2015 Herbert P. Lefler Lecture on Monday, Oct. 26 at 4:30 p.m. in Leighton Hall Room 305. This year’s lecture, entitled “The Hidden History of Back Channel Negotiations between the U.S. and Cuba,” will be presented by Peter Kornbluh, Director of the National Security Archive's Cuba Documentation Project. This event is free and open to the public.
A well-known expert on U.S.-Cuba relations, Kornbluh is a National Security Archive Senior Analyst and the Director of the Archive's Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects.
His publications include: Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana; The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962; The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History; Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba; and The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, which was an L.A. Times best book of the year. A smaller book on the U.S. and the overthrow of the government of Salvador Allende was published in Chile as Los EEUU y el Derrocamiento de Allende.
Kornbluh has been published in Foreign Policy, New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and many others. He has appeared on national television and radio broadcasts, including 60 Minutes, The Charlie Rose show, Nightline, CNN, All Things Considered, and FreshAir.
Documentary films include the Oscar-winning Panama Deception, the History Channel's Bay of Pigs Declassified, and The Trials of Henry Kissinger. In November 2003, Kornbluh served as producing consultant on the Discovery Times documentary, Kennedy and Castro: The Secret History, based on his article, Kennedy and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation.
Kornbluh is a weekly columnist for the Chilean newspaper, Diario Siete.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Department of History, with support from the Herbert P. Lefler Lectureship, a series of endowed lectures in history, with the aim of bringing to Carleton historians who have raised significant questions relevant to history as a whole. Lefler lecturers give public presentations on their latest research, and conduct a seminar session with history majors regarding the major conceptual issues. Lecturers also meet with students enrolled in the junior year history colloquium, a class designed to examine the fundamental questions on the nature and importance of the discipline of history.
For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-5241. Leighton Hall is located at the end of College Street on the Carleton campus, and is also accessible via Highway 19 in Northfield.
