Richard A. Freund is a professor of history and director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford. He is a field archaeologist and has written extensively on biblical archaeology, from the Exodus story to the origins of Christianity.

Read about the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 and view a slide show of the experiment, which put ordinary Stanford University students in the position of guarding “inmates” – other students – while, unknown to the participants, their behavior was videotaped. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo, one of the experiment’s authors, says today that the sexual degradation of Iraqi […]

Read an October 1998 report on torture in the United States prepared by the Coalition Against Torture and Racial discrimination, a working group of non-government civil and human rights groups in the U.S.

Read an October 2003 Atlantic Monthly story about the thin line between interrogation and torture.

Read and listen to a May 1, 2009, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program about the morality of torture.

Read a Aug. 20, 2007, Washington Post story on the American Psychological Association vote to prohibit psychologists from participating in several interrogation techniques that have been used against U.S. terrorism detainees because the methods are immoral and psychologically damaging.

Read a May 1, 2009, National Catholic Reporter story about a rally of human rights activists in Washington, D.C., to support a criminal inquiry.

Read a May 11, 2009, “Sightings” column by Martin Marty that follows up on his earlier essay on torture and churchgoers; it includes a response from David Neff of Christianity Today.

A Religion News Service piece analyzing the portrayal of torture in the 2012 movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”