Lectures For Lifelong Learners!

This lecture traces how the power of stories, chance encounters, and embracing risk transformed Alex Poppe’s life. She spent nearly a decade in northern Iraq, teaching and volunteering in humanitarian response. American audiences understand Iraq primarily through the lens of war and geopolitical abstraction. The heart of this talk depicts the specific, complicated, funny, heartbreaking, and deeply human stories of the people with whom Alex worked; stories that rarely make it into mainstream media, US television shows, or US films. In our current polarized political moment, these are essential stories.