This edited transcript is of a talk given by Colombian journalist Hollman Morris at Georgetown University in Washington. Morris spoke in protest of the appointment of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe as a "distinguished scholar" at Georgetown. As the host and editorial director of Contravía, a weekly investigative news show, Morris has regularly taken on the Colombian government for the myriad human rights abuses committed in the last decade by the country’s military and its paramilitary allies. This work has earned him many awards internationally, but he also was targeted by Uribe's intelligence service as a part of a surveillance program and smear campaign.

This originally appeared in the January/February 2011 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas.