Why We Fight: Valerie Plesch Visits American University

Grantee Valerie Plesch visits American University’s seminar “Why We Fight: U.S. War & Peace” on Thursday, November 3, at 2:30pm EDT. Plesch will share her Pulitzer Center-supported project After the Fall: Refugees in America with the class, taught by Bill Gentile, Campus Consortium Advisory Council Member. 

“Why We Fight: U.S. War & Peace” investigates the United States’ continual involvement in conflict, exploring themes, causes, and solutions in the context of three conflict scenarios: The Vietnam War, the conflicts in Central America during the 1980s, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Plesch is a freelance Vietnamese-Argentine American photojournalist, documentary photographer, and writer currently based in northern Virginia. Since early 2021, she has documented the growing Afghan community in the Washington, D.C., region, including the resettlement of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers before and after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.