Crisis in Myanmar: The Rohingya Refugees & The American Response

Pulitzer Center grantees Nahal Toosi and Jason Motlagh visit the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics on Monday, May 21, 2018, to discuss the persecution of the Rohingya community in Myanmar and share their reporting, documenting the mass exodus of Rohingya into Bangladesh and elsewhere and the role other nations including the United States played–or failed to play–in the humanitarian crisis. 

After presenting their reporting, Toosi and Motlagh sit down with Claudia M. Flores, assistant clinical professor of law and director of the International Human Rights Clinic. In this conversation they will examine potential answers to overarching questions of the crisis such as whether or not it was preventable and what can be done now. 

Toosi is a foreign affairs correspondent at Politico. Her article, "The Genocide the U.S. Didn't See Coming," critically examines the role of the United States in the Rohingya crisis and how diplomatic relations interacted with the persecution of the Rohingya.

Motlagh is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose Pulitzer Center supported project, Burma in Transition, explores the changing political landscape of Myanmar and what this means for the Rohingya people and the potential for expansion of political and media freedom.

The evening event at the Institute of Politics is free and open to the public. It is part of a two-day visit to Chicago by the journalists and Mark Schulte, Pulitzer Center education director. The University of Chicago is a Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium partner.