Ali Ahmida of UNE gives two talks on Italian Fascism in Libya at University of Minnesota

Ali Ahmida, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Political Science, recently traveled to the University of Minnesota (UMN), where he served as a panelist and as a keynote speaker at two separate events.

On April 12, Ahmida participated in a public symposium titled “Reframing Mass Violence in Africa: Social Memory and Social Justice.”  The event was convened by the African Studies Initiative and was co-sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, Global Programs and Strategy Alliance, UMN Extension Global Initiatives, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. As a panelist, Ahmida presented “When the Subaltern Speak: Researching Italian Fascist Colonial Genocide in Libya, 1929-1934.” In the talk, he debunked the myth that Italian Fascism was moderate compared to the Fascism practiced under the German Nazi regime by discussing the internment and/or murder of more than 110,000 Libyans that took place in an approximate five-year period.

On April 13, Ahmida gave a Mediterranean Collaborative Lecture at the university on a related topic: “Genocide, Silence, and the Politics of Memory: Archival and Field Work Notes on Fascist Internment in Colonial Libya.”

While at the University of Minnesota, Ahmida had the opportunity to visit with students enrolled in a course titled “North Africa: The Conquerors and the Conquered from the Rise of Islam through the Colonial Era.” The class is currently studying Ahmida’s book The Making of Modern Libya.

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