Abdo and Afashe will take questions after their presentations.

Jihad "Jay" Abdo was delivering pizza in Los Angeles to make ends meet before being picked for a movie role opposite Nicole Kidman. Familiar to Arab households throughout the Middle East for decades due to his television and film roles, he has been acting since 1988, and most recently starred in Queen of the Desert and A Hologram for the King. In 2011, during a trip to Beirut in a conversation with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, Abdo spoke out against the Assad government and how they were "responsible for killings within their borders." When he returned to Syria, Abdo received a number of threats and was generally intimidated and criticized for his lack of patriotism. He moved to the United States in October 2011 to escape persecution, joining his wife, the artist Fadia Afashe, in Minnesota, where she was studying as a Humphrey fellow in the Fulbright Program. The couple later moved to Los Angeles so he could start acting again.

Fadia Afashe describes herself not only as a visual artist, but as a writer and activist. Afashe studied art with the renowned Syrian painter Adnan Abed Al- Rahman and graduated from the Ismail Institute of Art in 2000. She’s had several national and international exhibitions. While immersing herself in the world of art, Afashe also pursued a degree in Criminal Law at the University of Damascus and graduated in 2003. Then she got a master’s degree from the Syrian-French Institut National d’Administration. Afashe used her degrees and artistic skills to engage in causes advocating women’s rights. She wrote and produced “Suspended” (2011), a short film about women, exposing how the laws of rape in the Arab world leave women unprotected and disenfranchised. During the Arab Spring in the Middle East, Afashe left Damascus for the United Stated to pursue a fellowship at the Humphrey School for Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, which she completed in May 2012. Fadia’s art became part of her activism to advocate for human rights, and to give a voice to people who can’t speak for themselves. Fadia is now based in Los Angeles and has had many individual painting shows.

• No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria, by Rania Abouzeid
  
• The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria and A Woman in the Crossfire, Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, by Samar Yazbek
  
• Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, by co-editors Robin Yassin-Kassab & Leila al-Shami
  
• My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution, by Diana Darke