Episode Details

Bashar al-Assad was Syria’s president for nearly 25 years. He brutally cracked down on a protest movement in 2011, kicking off a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians and led to 12 million people being displaced. Earlier this month, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled the al-Assad regime, and he fled to Russia. Reset hears reflections from two members of the Syrian American community in Chicago. Bara Sarraj is a biology professor and former Syrian political prisoner. Samira Alhamwi is an adult education manager for the Syrian Community Network who came to the U.S. as a refugee in 2016. For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.