Peter Jan Honigsberg

Professor Peter Jan Honigsberg’s current research focuses on the rule of law and human rights violations that occurred in the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and on the study of terrorism and other post-9/11 issues.

Honigsberg is the founder and director of Witness to Guantanamo, which began in fall 2008. He has filmed over 158 full-length and in-depth interviews in twenty countries of former detainees and others who have worked in or are associated with the prison in Guantánamo, including prison guards, interrogators, interpreters, chaplains, medical personnel, prosecutors, habeas and JAG attorneys, high-ranking government and military officials, and family members of former prisoners. In May 2007, Honigsberg visited the detention center at Guantánamo.

Honigsberg has contributed pieces to the Washington Post, the Huffington Post and other media sources and blogs. He recently completed a book on his work with Witness to Guantánamo: A Place Outside the Law: Forgotten Voices from Guantánamo, published in fall 2019 by Beacon Press. He is also the author of Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror (University of California Press, 2009) and Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir (University of California Press, 2000).

Bio updated January 2022