FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 30, 2009

Contact: Sonja Matanovic 202.663.5644
E-mail: smatanovic@jhu.edu

JHU SAIS to Host Event Series Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) will host a weeklong series of events around the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall during November 2-9, entitled, “The SAIS Wall Project: Walls Still to Fall.”

The events, sponsored by the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations and students from the German Club SAIS, will feature guest speakers discussing barriers to freedom around the world. In addition, “open mic” sessions will be held from 12 to 2 p.m. daily, during which students, guests and members of the public are welcome to speak.

The sessions will take place in the SAIS Nitze Building Courtyard in front of a model of the Berlin Wall, as well as a slice of the real wall which once divided East and West Germany and was bequeathed to SAIS in 1997 by the Berlin Senate.

Confirmed speakers include:

November 3

• 12 p.m. – Azar Nafisi, executive director of SAIS Cultural Conversations and author of Things I Have Been Silent About (2008) and Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003)
• 5:30 p.m. – Carl Bildt, minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden, and Radoslaw Sikorski, minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland

November 4

• 9:30 a.m. – Markus Meckel, minister for Foreign Affairs of the German Democratic Republic and member of the German Bundestag

On November 9 at 12 p.m. the model “wall” will be torn down in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Refreshments will be served.

For an up-to-date list of speakers, click here.

All events will take place in the SAIS Nitze Building Courtyard, at 1740 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.

Media who want to attend any of these events should contact Sonja Matanovic in the SAIS Office of Communications at 202.663.5644 or smatanovic@jhu.edu.