Witness uses DIY video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.

For this lecture, we welcome Witness Program Director Sam Gregory, a video producer, trainer, and human rights advocate. As Henry Jenkins wrote of him, “Gregory’s comments about the strengths and limitations of Youtube as a site for media activism were eye-opening. Witness was founded by Peter Gabriel on the assumption that if you could place cameras in the hands of the people who chose to be ‘in the wrong place at the right time’, i.e. human rights advocates and activists around the world living and working with communities affected by violations, then you would enable a new way to mobilize action for real change.”

Gregory’s videos have been screened at the US Congress, the UK Houses of Parliament, the United Nations, and at film festivals worldwide. In 2004 he was a jury member for the IDFA Amnesty International/Doen Award. He was a Kennedy Memorial Scholar at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where his Master’s in Public Policy focused on international development and media. He is on the Board of the US Campaign for Burma, and the Tactical Technology Collective.