Writers under Surveillance: The FBI Files
JPat Brown and Beryl C D Lipton
Saturday, 6 April 2019
2:00pm
1 hour
Worcester College: Lecture Theatre
£7 - £12.50
Freedom of information campaigners from the US MuckRock non-profit organisation JPat Brown and Beryl C D Lipton explain what they uncovered about how far the US state was prepared to go to gather intelligence on writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Aldous Huxley.
Brown and Lipton and their colleagues at Muckrock used freedom of information requests to reveal surveillance of leading writers carried out in the late 20th century. They show what the state thought about writers such as Hemingway, Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, and Hunter S. Thompson. Each were seen as a threat to the state because of their ‘dangerous’ ideas and ability to spread them.
Brown is executive editor of MuckRock, a non-profit, collaborative news site that brings together journalists, researchers, activists, and regular citizens to request, analyse, and share government documents. Lipton is senior reporter at MuckRock.
Presented by MIT Press