The conversation began with Al Ahmad showing an excerpt of Saudi’s Secret Uprising, the BBC documentary she produced about the mass protests in Saudi Arabia, which were largely unreported in the international media at the time. Her film also documented the violence the government used to quell the demonstrations.

“I traveled under the radar” to film the documentary, Al Ahmad said, rather than waiting for official credentials to work as a journalist, something the regime never granted her. 

Since the film aired in 2014, she’s been threatened and accused of being a spy, a liar, a terrorist and a heretic. She has been critical of the international media for its relative lack of coverage of the protests, while the Saudi state-controlled media shaped the narrative, she has said.

She persevered in her own coverage of events, she told the UD audience, working under cover and in a state of “constant fear [that] never went away.”

More recently, Al Ahmad has been covering the war in Yemen, in which Saudi Arabia, with help from the United States, has been assisting the Yemeni government in its conflict with Houthi insurgents. 

In the last several years, she’s produced three documentaries for PBS’s Frontline about the war, including her most recent film, Targeting Yemen. She spoke at UD about the dangers of working in a war zone, especially one where drone attacks can come with no warning.

As with her other reporting, Al Ahmad said she works to get beyond the geopolitical issues to document the human cost of the war, which has produced an ongoing humanitarian crisis and widespread famine. She has been recognized as one of the few journalists for Western media on the ground in Yemen.

She told Begleiter she wasn’t educated to be a journalist but that she’s always been passionate about exploring issues to uncover the facts. She said she also believes she has a responsibility to be critical and to expose injustice.

Al Ahmad is a joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism and the recipient of the 2019 Wallenberg Medal for humanitarian actions. In June, she accepted the Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of News Publishers on behalf of murdered Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist. 

Free Speech Week at UD

In addition to Al Ahmad’s talk, UD marked Free Speech Week with a series of workshops offered by PEN America, an organization that works to protect freedom for all types of written expression.

Jonathan Friedman, the group’s Campus Free Speech Project director, led workshops for student leaders and for professional staff members working in Student Life and Residence Life.

Free Speech Week activities at UD were organized by Jennifer Lambe, associate professor in the Department of Communication and a founding faculty member of the Center for Political Communication. 

This year’s Free Speech Week events were supported by the UD Initiative on Free and Responsible Expression, the Center for Political Communication, PEN America, Index on Censorship, the Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion, the departments of Communication and of Political Science and International Relations, Residence Life and Housing, and the Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion.