NMH Speaker's Film Confronts Torture

MOUNT HERMON, MA—Northfield Mount Hermon School’s State of the World speaker series presents a talk by a lawyer-turned-documentary-film producer on November 1 at 6:45 in the Rhodes Room in Beveridge Hall. Donald G. Glascoff Jr., a graduate of the class of 1963, is an executive producer of the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. He will discuss his decision to abandon efforts to achieve some degree of justice for the prisoners and detainees held by American forces worldwide using the judicial and legislative process.

“The courts seemed powerless to assure basic human rights to prisoners, as each decision they made to protect those rights was immediately negated by executive or legislative actions,” Glascoff says. Taxi to the Dark Side “is an effort to educate the American voter on the issues of basic rights for prisoners and the actions taken by the Bush administration to eliminate those rights.” The film, which was directed by Alex Gibney, tells the story of an Afghan taxi driver, mistakenly arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered, notwithstanding that his American captors knew that he was innocent. It includes interviews with the young American servicemen who, in killing him, felt they were simply following orders. The film tracks the responsibility for a policy of torture to the highest levels of American government.

Glascoff’s talk is free and open to the public.

For directions, go to www.nmhschool.org or call 413-498-3000.

Glascoff is a retired partner and co-chairman of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the oldest Wall Street law firm. He is the chairman of the Park Avenue Bank in New York City. His experience is in international casino and hotel development and management, public and private debt and equity offerings by commingled investment vehicles and financial institutions, real estate financing, leasing, development and management and secondary mortgage market transactions. Glascoff served as special assistant to the general counsel (1973-1974), and associate deputy general counsel (1974-1975) in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was also an adjunct associate professor of law at Delaware Law School in 1974.

Contact: Kate Snyder, 413-498-3357 or ksnyder@nmhschool.org.

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