Elaine Wong Distinguished Lecture Program
"War and Women in Sudan and Darfur: Vulnerabilities, Resilience and Aspirations for Peace and Justice" with Suad Musa
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 | 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. | Location TBD
This lecture sheds light on the social and political background of the war in Sudan since its outbreak on April 15, 2023. It explains the political economy of the war and its devastating effects on the population, including the accompanying human rights violations and its disproportionate impact on women and girls. The lecture highlights that, despite their extreme vulnerability, women survivors have mustered their remaining strength and worked to bolster their resilience in the face of ongoing violations. They have done so by standing in solidarity with each other and with community - as individuals, activists, and organizations, providing food and water to their impoverished communities, offering psychological support, documenting atrocities, and advocating for a ceasefire and an end to the war. They have also consistently demanded their effective participation in mediation and negotiation processes under the auspices of the United Nations, as well as their involvement in the management of humanitarian aid.
Our centre, the Gender Centre for Peacebuilding, Justice, and Development, has been working from El Fasher, Darfur, since the beginning of the war, through the brutal siege that lasted nearly two years (from November 2023 to October 2025), and continues its work to this day. We provide food through community kitchens (Takaya) for displaced people and vulnerable groups, organize psychosocial support sessions and home visits, offer guidance on security and protection, and distribute hygiene kits to young women and adolescent girls to protect them from becoming victims of sex trafficking and its devastating consequences.
Internally displaced Sudanese women and refugees in neighbouring African countries continue to suffer from hunger and deprivation and are vulnerable to sexual traficking due to the scarcity of financial support from both family and diminishing Humanitarian agencies.
While women, girls, and Sudanese society as a whole endure the ravages of this senseless war, the warring parties, particularly the de facto Islamist-led government, persist in the conflict, rejecting all international ceasefire initiatives, including the four-party initiative (The Quad) proposed by the United States with the participation of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt.
Through this lecture, I appeal to you to financially support the Gender Centre so that it can continue to help victims of war, including women, girls and families in Darfur. I also appeal to you to raise your voices in support of the American initiative to stop the war in Sudan in the name of women and children, as they are the most affected by the crimes committed in the country.
About the Presenter
Suad Musa is a Sudanese from El Fasher, Darfur, a city that endured the longest siege during the war and witnessed some of the most horrific atrocities committed there since April 15, 2023, during which she lost more than twenty of her family members including her sister and a brother. A feminist scholar and consultant with a PhD in peace studies, she is the winner of the 2019 Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize for the best scholarly book for her book Hawks and Doves in Sudan's Armed Conflict: Al-Hakkamat Baggara Women of Darfur." She is a research fellow at the Horn of Africa Institute for Strategic Studies in Nairobi, Kenya. Since the outbreak of war in Sudan on April 15, 2023, Suad has engaged in dialogues, discussions, and campaigns on war and peace in Sudan, the siege of El Fasher, women, peace, security, protection, and governance. She has also organized campaigns, including fundraising for community kitchens in Darfur, and petitions to end the war. She is the founding director of the Gender Center for Peacebuilding, Justice and Sustainable Development in El Fasher, Darfur, Sudan, and the Ganadeel Organization for Gendered Peace, Justice and Development in Uganda. Suad also writes in Arabic and published a novel titled "A Curse in the Belly of Wadi" in Arabic in 2023.
About the Lecture Series
Elaine Wong worked at Brandeis for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2021. Over the decades, she was central to the creation and launch of many major programs and initiatives, including the Brandeis Pluralism Alliance, Generation One Network, Justice Brandeis Seminar, the Brandeis Core and the Community Engaged Scholars Program. She contributed to numerous diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives throughout her career.
The Elaine Wong Distinguished Lecture program celebrates Elaine's enduring impact on Brandeis. The annual event explores racial, class, gender, sexual and other forms of injustice and inequality; showcases historically marginalized people and perspectives; and/or promotes a diverse, inclusive environment.
Past Lectures
Media in a Divided America
Brandeis University hosted an engaging discussion featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning N.Y. Times editor Dean Baquet, along with panelists Gary Gerstle and Sarah Sobieraj, as they explored the roots and solutions to a divided America.
Speakers and Moderators:
Event 1
- Dean Baquet, the pioneering former top editor of The New York Times
- Moderated by: Ann Silvio, Adriana Lacy and Paul Anskat
- Gary Gerstle, author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
- Sarah Sobieraj, a sociologist studying media, political culture, and digital harassment
- Moderated by: Neil Swidey
Why It Is Not OK to Ask “Where Are You From?”: Racism and Asian American History
This symposium explored the history of anti-Asian racism in the United States. With the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the United States discriminated against a specific race in its immigration and naturalization policies for the first time in its history. Chinese were viewed by White ethnics to be vile, infidels, uncultured, and unassimilable. These policies were not lifted until 1943, preventing countless Chinese from legally settling into the United States, after decades of using Chinese laborers to extract natural resources and build railroads. The racist sentiments became ingrained and created the impression of Chinese as the perpetual aliens in America. Similar policies were used against other Asian groups such as Japanese, Koreans, Southeast Asians, and Filipinos. Also notorious was the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II. Asians and even Asian Americans born in the United States are too often asked “Where are you from?” “Where are you really from?” The scapegoating of Asians during the Covid pandemic is an extension of this alienage. This symposium brought together authoritative voices on Asian American representation in government, mass media, and the arts.
Speakers:
- Evelyn Yang: Author, advocate, wife of former Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang on "AAPI Politics and Campaign Life"
- Lori Kido Lopez: Professor in Media and Cultural Studies and Director of the Asian American Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison on "The Role of Media in Anti-Asian Racism and Asian American Activism"
- jason chu: Rapper, activist, educator on "Asian American Soul: Appropriation, Appreciation & Participation"
The Elaine Wong Distinguished Lecture Program is sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Affairs. Additional support this year is provided by the Department of Fine Arts, the International Business School, Asian American & Pacific Islander Studies, and East Asian Studies.