CANTON -- St. Lawrence University’s Department of Government will host author Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, in St. Lawrence University’s Hepburn Auditorium, room 218. Admission is free.

The United States and Cuba have been enemies for a half a century until the Obama administration pledged to normalize relations earlier this year. Kornbluh challenges the conventional wisdom of perpetual hostility between the United States and Cuba, looking beyond invasions, covert operations, assassination plots and a grinding economic embargo to document the untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. His award-winning book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana, chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation.

Kornbluh has helped to obtain and analyze thousands of declassified U.S. government documents in relation to major episodes in U.S.-Latin American relations. These events include the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs invasion, the Contra War and U.S. destabilization of the Chilean government and its subsequent support for the Pinochet regime.

In addition Back Channel to Cuba, which was named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year for 2014, he is also the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, among other books, reports and contributions to scholarly volumes. Kornbluh recently returned from the Summit in Panama, where President Obama met with Cuban leader Raul Castro.

For more information, contact the 229-5214.