Visiting Law Prof. Barbara Olshansky J.D. ‘85 encouraged listeners to stand up to human rights violations at the U.S. detention center in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay at a book reading Tuesday afternoon.

Olshansky, who is teaching clinics in civil rights and looks to start a civil rights major at the Law School, read and discussed selections from her newest book, “Democracy Detained: Secret Unconstitutional Practices in the U.S. War on Terror,” in front of about 30 law students, staff and community members in the Robert Crown Law Library.

One of the most renowned public interest lawyers in the country, Olshansky scored her biggest legal victory in the 2004 Supreme Court decision Shafiq Rasul, et al., Petitioners v. George W. Bush, when the Court ruled that detainees at Guantanamo Bay could challenge their incarceration in federal court.

During Tuesday’s reading, Olshanksy expressed opposition to politicians “who seek unchecked power to pursue their global ‘War on Terror’ and who express a chilling disregard for human rights and the rule of law in that pursuit.”

She said that the Bush administration is undermining its own moral credibility, making “the U.S. less safe by committing humanitarian and human rights violations in the name of national security.”

Citing the example of terrorist accomplice Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was imprisoned for more than three years without hearing or trial, Olshanksy warned of the imminent loss of Americans’ civil liberties.

“The government’s unprecedented action poses a grave threat to the constitutional rights of all American citizens,” Olshansky said.

Until recently, she said, the names of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were unavailable to even the lawyers attempting to represent them, weakening the detainees’ cases because it was much more difficult to sue in the names of all the prisoners than in individual cases. It was not until the Associated Press sued the Department of Defense in 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act that the prisoners’ names and statuses were declassified.

“It is an astounding thing that our administration has annihilated the writ of habeas corpus,” Olshansky said, referring to the right to trial enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

The speaker discussed the treatment of children, some as young as seven, in U.S. detainment facilities.

“Among those seized and sent [to Guantanamo] were children, juvenile detainees, who, depending on their age, were housed in a separate prison called Camp Iguana or with adult detainees,” she said.

She quoted Amnesty International regarding the case of a 13-year-old boy, Mohammed Ismail Agha, who was seized in Afghanistan, held for a year without trial and “subjected to solitary confinement and sleep deprivation techniques in the same manner as adult detainees.”

While Rasul v. Bush was a substantial improvement for Guantanamo detainees, Olshansky said that she continues to pressure the Bush administration to enforce prisoners’ rights and abide by the Geneva Convention.

“Following the Rasul decision, the detainees are now allowed to challenge their detention in court,” she told The Daily, “but once the trial starts, they are prohibited from opening their mouths.”

Olshansky urged attendees to help raise awareness of the civil rights issues surrounding the War on Terror.

“People have to go to any group that they have any affinity with and say, ‘What are we going to do about this?’” she said.

While acknowledging that there are many obstacles ahead for the protection of civil rights, Olshansky said she was more optimistic than when she arrived at Stanford three months ago.

“What I have seen since I arrived on campus is a strong willingness to act,” she said.

Sarah Wilson, reference librarian and archivist at the Law Library, said she found the event a moving call for civil action.

“She presented a serious topic in a graceful and engaging way,” Wilson wrote in an email to The Daily. “Despite all she’s seen in her work on behalf of the detainees, she remains optimistic that if people take action, justice for ‘political prisoners’ can be had.”