university of florida

As the daughter of a Syrian political exile, I never took my right to political dissent and free speech for granted. When my father left Damascus, Syria, in 1979, he narrowly escaped death. On the night of his wedding that summer, as Hafez Assad’s ruling Ba’ath Party had begun its violent crackdown on political dissidents, some of my father’s college friends were rounded up, never to be seen again. My parents fled the country the next day, eventually arriving in the U.S., where my father was accepted into a medical residency program. As the Syrian government’s crackdown worsened in the 1980s, my father’s hope of ever seeing his country again slipped into the abyss of impossibility.

The right to political dissent and free speech have been central to my upbringing in the U.S. Growing up in Northwest Florida, my father taught us to cherish the freedom that America gave us—the freedom to freely speak our minds without fear of reprisal, the freedom to critique the government without losing our job, and the freedom to fully practice our faith. I cherished my freedom of speech as foundational to my American identity.