Peggy Schmertzler Leadership Seminar Welcomed Dr. Sima Samar

The Harvard Foundation hosted Dr. Sima Samar—a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, physician, and former vice president in Afghanistan’s interim government under Hamid Karzai—for the Peggy Schmertzler Leadership Seminar on March 4 at the Harvard Faculty Club. As the signature event of Women’s Week, the program highlighted Samar, a former chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan, who spoke about the past, present, and future of Afghan women’s rights. She received the 2012 Right Livelihood Award for her longstanding advocacy and is the author of the memoir Outspoken: My Fight for Freedom and Human Rights in Afghanistan, which was distributed to attendees. 

Through a partnership with the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, the program also featured a clip from a documentary about four women on the Afghan government’s negotiating team working toward a political settlement with the Taliban. Producer Leslie Thomas, an Emmy Award–winning art director and founder of ART WORKS Projects, joined the discussion, noting that Afghan women gained the right to vote in 1919—before women in the United States. Samar emphasized that misinformation about culture and religion must not erase Afghanistan’s history of women’s participation in public life, stressing that education and documentation of women’s experiences remain vital to protecting freedom.