Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

Earlier today, former New York Times reporter Tim Weiner visited the Columbia J-School to give a talk to students billed as "All you ever wanted to know about TORTURE but were afraid to ask." Given the recent ambivalence of many American news organizations on the T word, we were curious to hear Weiner's take.

Weiner led an open-ended discussion with j-schoolers asking career and craft questions and Weiner answering from his considerable experience as an investigative reporter, national security correspondent and author.

But when the torture topic was eventually broached, he had this to say:

If you read the OLC memorandum that the administration released, and you see what was authorized, and you see what was done even beyond the authorization ... If stripping people bare naked, chaining them to the ceiling, beating them up, depriving them of solid food, depriving them of sleep ... making them feel they are at the point of death... is not torture, then the word has no meaning. And language has no meaning.