Thank you.ĪMY GOODMAN: Well, why don’t you begin by just explaining, setting the stage for us, how did this experiment begin? We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Professor Zimbardo. Professor Zimbardo also recently served as president of the American Psychological Association and is now director of the new Center for Interdisciplinary Policy Education and Research on Terrorism. He delivered his final lecture there earlier this month. He’s professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, where he’s taught for the last half-century. Professor Zimbardo joins us today from the firehouse studio in New York. It’s called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Professor Philip Zimbardo has just written a new book that for the first time tells the full story of the famed Stanford prison experiment. The two-week experiment had to be canceled after just six days. The guards had become dangerously sadistic, and the prisoners were breaking down emotionally. In scenes eerily similar to Abu Ghraib, prisoners were stripped naked, bags put on their heads and sexually humiliated. By day two, the guards were going far beyond keeping the prisoners behind bars. The experiment was scheduled to run for two weeks. In 1971, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo created an experiment at Stanford University in which 24 male college students were randomly assigned the roles of prison guards and prisoners at a makeshift jail on campus, actually in the psychology building. But who’s really to blame for the abuses at Abu Ghraib? The answer may lie in a landmark study conducted more than three decades ago. The Bush administration tried to paint the scandal as an isolated incident committed by rogue soldiers. Images showed Iraqis with bags over their heads, beaten, set upon by dogs, forced into sexually humiliating acts. The pictures were leaked to the press and first revealed to the world in May of 2004. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. AMY GOODMAN: As the United States enters the fifth year of the occupation of Iraq, some of the most enduring images of the war remain the vivid photographs of U.S.
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