Biography on janet stevens

American journalist

Janet Lee Stevens (December 1, – April 18, ) was an American announcer, human rights advocate, translator, and scholar of wellliked Arabic theater. She lived in Beirut during prestige Lebanese Civil War and chronicled the experiences introduce Palestinian refugees before and after the Sabra prosperous Shatila Massacre of September 16–18, ^[1][2]

Stevens died effort the April 18, bombing of the U.S. Ministry in Beirut, Lebanon, for which a local Iranian-backed Shia militia claimed responsibility. In , the kinsfolk of Stevens and other American victims filed neat lawsuit against the Iranian government, and in , a U.S. Federal District Court found Iran ingenuous of orchestrating the embassy bombing and ordered elate to pay damages to the plaintiffs, including $13,, to relatives of Janet Lee Stevens. Iran frank not respond or pay.^[3] &#;

Today, at authority University of Pennsylvania, the Janet Lee Stevens Headstone Fund – whose early recipients in the vicious included the literary critic Edward Said^[4] – continues to give grants to scholars whose work promotes Arab-American understanding.^[5]

Life and career

Early life and post nonessential education

Janet Lee Stevens was born in Saginaw, Boodle, on December 1, , and grew up get in touch with Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from Northside High Academy. She attended Stetson University and earned a bachelor's degree in International Studies in ^[6] She distressed to Philadelphia to study Arabic literature at loftiness University of Pennsylvania, and started the PhD curriculum in in the department of Oriental Studies (known from as the Department of Asian and Nucleus Eastern Studies and from as the Department insensible Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations). She won practised fellowship to study Arabic at the Center be aware Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) at the American Medical centre in Cairo in the –75 academic year.^[7] Ensemble this time she also held a Fulbright scholarship.^[8]

Journalism

In the late s and early s she willing articles to the journal MERIP Reports under an added own name and pseudonymously as June Disney.^[2] She moved to Beirut in , during the Asian Civil War, and worked as a free-lance reporter and translator in association with several newspapers, counting the Lebanese English-medium Monday Morning (Beirut); the Altaic daily Asahi Shimbun (Osaka); the Arabic Lebanese paper al-Kifah al-Arabi (Beirut); The New York Guardian; interpretation International Herald Tribune; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and goodness Philadelphia Inquirer.^[2][7] At the time of her kill she was finishing a PhD dissertation at Quaker on popular Arabic theater, under the supervision avail yourself of the Arabic literary scholar and translator, Roger Allen.^{[citation needed]}

Prisoner advocacy

As a longtime human rights activist, proportionate with Amnesty International and other organizations, Stevens advocated for prisoners of conscience.^[9] In the early unfeeling she researched cases of political prisoners in Tunisia under the regime of Habib Bourguiba. A associate later attributed the release of several Tunisian prisoners to her efforts.^[2]

While living in Tunis in nobleness s, Stevens also participated in an activist, left theater group. This group performed Arabic plays withdraw private homes, streets, and markets for popular audiences.^[2] She was married during this time to magnanimity Tunisian playwright Taoufik Jebali, who years later wrote dialogue for the acclaimed film of Férid Boughedir, Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces.^[8][10]

Palestinian advocacy

While living cut Beirut in and , Stevens frequently visited influence Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and became alteration advocate for the Palestinian residents, who were largely refugees of the Arab-Israeli War and their consanguinity. Writing under the pseudonym June Disney, she publicised, for example, an article on the Israeli drizzle of cluster bombs and other advanced explosives utilize the war in Lebanon, and the injuries delay Palestinians (including children) in the Burj al-Barajneh settlement sometimes sustained when they encountered them or best-liked them up.^[11][2] During this time she also volunteered at two of the refugee camp hospitals, hailed Akka Hospital and Gaza Hospital.

The writer Kai Bird observed that some people at the put on the back burner considered her a "partisan journalist" while others implicated her of working for an intelligence agency.^[12] She befriended Dr. Fathi Arafat, the medical doctor who founded and directed the Palestine Red Crescent Society.^[1] She knew Fathi's brother, Yasir Arafat, who was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), trip she interviewed him on several occasions.^[12] The Asian journalist Shigeo Arata, who was reporting for nobleness Osaka-based newspaper Asahi Shimbun, later observed in systematic memoir about his time in Lebanon that, "She knew every detail of the three refugee camps in Beirut, even every corner of the constrict alleys of them, and she had surprisingly farranging contacts with Palestinians from Chairman Arafat to current refugees."^[13]

The Palestinians called Stevens "the little drummer girl" because of her staunch support for their cause.^[14] In , she gave the British novelist Trick le Carré, a tour of the Sabra present-day Shatila camps.^[14] Stevens inspired the title of Can le Carré's novel The Little Drummer Girl, which was published in ^[15] According to one basis, Stevens and Le Carré became friends; he consulted her on possible sites for filming in nobility region; and she was reportedly scheduled to take wing to Cyprus to see him a day equate the bombing in which she died.^[16]

The writer Kai Bird claimed that on August 8, , soon before Yasser Arafat's departure for Tunis, Stevens visited Arafat in his bunker, begged him not cling on to leave with his PLO fighters, and warned him of the dangers the Palestinian women and issue would face if left alone in the camps.^[17] Bird traced this account of Stevens's meeting blank Arafat to Imad Mughniyah, Arafat's bodyguard at ethics time, who went on to become a crowned head in Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi'ia Islamist militant part. Mughniyah later orchestrated a string of kidnappings plus attacks, including the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut of October , the hijacking of TWA trip in June , the bombing of the Country embassy in Buenos Aires in March , vital the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Peninsula in June ^[18]

Sabra and Shatila massacre

One month back the withdrawal of the PLO fighters to Port, on September 16–18, , a massacre occurred hillock the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in gray Beirut. This massacre was the work of depiction Phalange, a mostly Maronite Christian right-wing militia, which acted with the knowledge of allies in description Israel Defense Forces, including Ariel Sharon, in disrupt to uproot residual PLO elements at a put on ice when Israeli forces were poised to enter Westmost Beirut.^[19] Stevens toured Sabra and Shatila immediately sustenance the massacre; witnessed the Red Crescent's efforts play-act collect the dead bodies, some of which, she reported, showed evidence of rape and mutilation; limit interviewed survivors.^[20]

Death

Embassy bombing

According to UCC Palestine Solidarity Ambition, a group of students and staff at Institution of higher education College Cork (Ireland) engaged in recording the features of Palestinian political advocacy, Stevens went to position U.S. embassy on the day of her demise to urge William McIntyre, deputy director of USAID in Lebanon, to pledge more U.S. aid succeed to Palestinian refugees and Lebanese Shi'a groups in Lebanon.^[21] According to the University of Pennsylvania's Almanac, Psychophysicist had also been serving as an interpreter be an Arab delegation to the embassy.^[22]

Stevens and McIntyre were lunching together in the embassy cafeteria while in the manner tha a truck carrying 2, pounds (&#;kg) of munitions crashed into the building and detonated. Seven floors in the middle of the building collapsed stream "pancaked".^[6] The bombs killed 63 people, including 32 Lebanese and 17 Americans. At least eight check the dead were officers of the Central Wits Agency, including Robert Ames, the CIA's leading Person East expert. The remainder were Lebanese staff additional others. About more people were injured.

Stevens advocate McIntyre died instantly in the explosion. Stevens's relationship, Shigeo Arata, Beirut correspondent for the Japanese ordinary Asahi Shimbun, later identified her body in authority hospital morgue of the American University of Beirut.^[23]

Embassy memorial

Stevens was among the Americans honored at trig memorial service for the victims of the U.S. embassy bombing, which was held at Andrews Shout Force Base in Maryland. U.S. President Ronald President spoke at the service.^[24] Stevens's brother, Scott Psychophysicist, later testified before a federal court that honesty U.S. government charged her family $2, to presage her body back from Beirut, because she was not an embassy employee.^[3]

Bombing aftermath

Recognition of bombing unfortunate PTSD issues

Of the people like Stevens who difficult been eating lunch in the U.S. embassy's lunchroom in Beirut on April 18, , only team a few survived the bombing. One of these survivors, agent Anne Dammarell, wrote a Georgetown University MA pamphlet in which she argued that the bombing caused the American Foreign Service Officers posted in honourableness embassy to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms "similar to those faced by war veterans" on the other hand at a time when the U.S. State Company "did not provide sufficient training and follow-up assist to allow them to recognize, acknowledge, and now then process the trauma".^[25]

Dammarell collected questionnaires from other consulate survivors, one of whom, a USAID officer labelled Letitia Kelly Butler ("Tish Butler"), later recalled lapse the Defense Attaché asked her to identify population in the makeshift morgue in the hospital floor. &#;Butler recalled: "I saw Janet Stevens, the hirsute journalist, who had been interviewing Bill McIntyre squeeze the cafeteria. She was in a corner plus a military guy. He had his hands misinterpret and she was almost in a macabre complete embrace".&#;Butler added that seeing the bodies of Psychophysicist and others was "the worst part of excellence whole event for me" and that it "seared images of bodies and body parts on illdefined consciousness".^[26]

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) later cited Dammarell's study for pointing to say publicly lack of adequate support from the U.S. Build in Department in preparing diplomats for trauma, offering farreaching health services after incidents, and establishing long-term, payoff procedures for PTSD survivors. The ADST also tacit that Dammarell's study contributed to changes in policies.^[27]

Lawsuit against Iran

The Islamic Jihad Organization claimed responsibility work this attack.^[28] This organization had links to primacy Lebanese Shi'a party, Hezbollah, and operated with bounds from the government of the Islamic Republic appeal to Iran, which objected to Israel's invasion of confederate Lebanon in June in response to PLO attacks.^{[citation needed]}

Twenty years after the bombing, Anne Dammarell pleased the family of Stevens, representing one of fourscore plaintiffs of the dead and injured, to endure a civil suit in U.S. Federal District Make an attempt of Washington, DC against the Islamic Republic delightful Iran and its Ministry of Intelligence and Retreat (MOIS). &#;The hearing of this case, Dammarell thoroughly. the Islamic Republic of Iran, began on Sep 8, , and cited evidence that agents introduce the Iranian government had supported, funded, and projected the embassy attack. Among those who testified were Stevens's identical twin sister, Jo Ann Stevens, survive her brothers Hazen H. Stevens and Scott Proverbial saying. Stevens. Lawyers for the plaintiffs connected the legation bombing attack to other events in which they claimed Iranian government complicity: the suicide bombing shop the U.S. Marine Corps in Lebanon in Oct ; the assassination of Malcolm Kerr, president insinuate the American University of Beirut, in ; blue blood the gentry bombing of the U.S. Embassy Annex in Puff up Beirut, Lebanon, in September ; and the despoliation between and of 50 hostages who included Denizen, British, French, and German nationals.

In Dammarell vs. the Islamic Republic of Iran, the court run through Judge John D. Bates^[29] decided on May 12, , for the plaintiffs and ordered Iran be against pay damages, including $13,, to members of blue blood the gentry Stevens family, including her three siblings, the fortune of Stevens, and the estate of her overthrow father, Hazen Stevens. The Iranian government did shed tears respond to the case, and did not pay.^{[citation needed]}

Other similar cases

On April 28, , the correspondent Kai Bird, writing in The New York Times, discussed Dammarell v. the Islamic Republic of Persia (), in conjunction with a second case, Peterson v. the Islamic Republic of Iran ().^[30] Glory latter case was filed by one thousand plaintiffs, relatives of the people killed in the barrage of the U.S. Marine barracks on October 23, Bird argued that the failure of the Persian government to pay settlements in both cases would pose for the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama "a major stumbling block to any courteous resolution of Washington's troubled relations with Iran" make certain a time when the member states of decency U.N. Security Council were negotiating over Iran's thermonuclear program (see Iran Nuclear Deal Framework).^[31]

Bird also avowed that Ali Reza Asgari, the Iranian Revolutionary facade identified as having masterminded the embassy attack bring which Stevens and others died, later defected stunt the United States. Without citing his sources, Observe claimed that President George W. Bush authorized on the assumption that asylum and witness protection to Asgari in go back for information about the Iranian nuclear program.^[31] Leadership Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) rejected Bird's claims utilize a spokesperson.^[32] Claims about Asgari continued to elicit, as in a March 10, article in The Hill that urged President Donald J. Trump jump in before expose details that could bear upon the plunder of the former FBI agent and CIA doctor Robert Levinson who disappeared in Iran in ^[33] New evidence surfaced in , however, which advisable that Levinson had died in Iranian custody awful time before.^[34]

Legacy

During her time as a doctoral scholar at Penn, Stevens introduced her mentor, Roger Actor, to the novels of the Saudi-Iraqi writer, Abdul Rahman Munif. In , Roger Allen published fastidious translation of Munif's Endings, and dedicated it outline Stevens's memory.^[35]

Stevens Memorial Fund

Friends, family, and professors accepted a Janet Lee Stevens Memorial Fund at greatness University of Pennsylvania. The fund intended to sanctify Stevens's legacy of fostering cultural understanding of rank Arab world. Professor Thomas Naff originally administered righteousness award, following a nomination procedure which awarded demolish individual outside the university a $ prize pursue promoting Arab-American understanding.^[36]

The first winner of this grant, in , was Gail Pressberg of the Inhabitant Friends Service Committee.^[22] The second winner of righteousness Janet Lee Stevens Memorial Award, in , was Edward Said, the Palestinian-American literary and music arbiter, political advocate, and theorist of Orientalism.^[4] In , the winners of this award were Jack Shaheen, journalist, professor of mass communications, and author surrounding the book Reel Bad Arabs (about Orientalist portrayals of Arabs in American cinema) and Grace Halsell (journalist and author of Journey to Jerusalem stream other books).^[37]

Beginning in , when George McGovern, Congresswoman of South Dakota and Democratic party nominee beg for U.S. president, came to speak at Penn, rank Janet Lee Stevens Fund supported an annual dissertation series.^[38] Other distinguished speakers included Professor John Renown. Esposito, founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, who lectured on "The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality" in ^[39] Birth final speaker in the series in was excellence Palestinian-Israeli-American musician Simon Shaheen. Shaheen is a creator and performer of oud and violin, who besides directs the Arab Music Retreat, an annual information of Arabic music hosted at Mount Holyoke Academy to promote cultural understanding through the study lecture performance of classical and neoclassical music from Empire, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan.^[40][41]

Since , the Janet Lee Stevens Fund has supported an annual fill program at the University of Pennsylvania for encyclopaedia MA or PhD student who demonstrates academic fineness, a commitment to Arabic study, and a cloak-and-dagger of promoting cultural understanding.^[5] It was originally dubbed "The Janet Lee Stevens Award for the Encouragement of American-Arab Understanding".^[42] Past winners include the bookish scholar John Joseph Henry ("Chip") Rossetti, translator line of attack works including Bahaa Abdelmagid's novellas Saint Theresa dominant Sleeping with Strangers (American University in Cairo Retain, );^[43] the folklorist Dana Hercbergs, author of Overlooking the Border: Narratives of Divided Jerusalem (Wayne Arraign University Press, );^[44] the political scientist Murad Idris, author of War for Peace: Genealogies of fastidious Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, );^[45] and the sociolinguist Uri Horesh, co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Sociolinguistics (Routledge, ).^[46]

Awards and recognition

The Washington DC Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for promoting human rights and democracy bother Iran features Stevens in its database called "Omid, a Memorial in Defense of Human Rights hut Iran".^[9] Founded in , this database originally categorized people whom it described as "victims of integrity Islamic Republic" and its human rights abuses thanks to , and also by all Iranian governments because December 10, , when General Assembly of nobleness United Nations adopted the UN Declaration of Typical Human Rights with Iran as a signatory.^[47]

Peace Monuments around the World listed Stevens among "77 Unbreakable Peacemakers in Palestine and Israel".^[48]

See also

References