In the summer of 2021, Sam Aronson, SSH '12, a young State Department employee, volunteered to help process more than 120,000 Afghan civilians clamoring to be evacuated from Kabul’s airport. What followed was a frenetic evacuation, with Aronson fielding pleas from embassy staff and military personnel to help Afghans they’d worked with and shepherded evacuees—whose descriptions and coded names he wrote in Sharpie on his arm—through Glory Gate, a “gap in the airport wall” hidden at the end of a “long, winding service road.”

Hear Sam's story firsthand, which is now the subject of the novel "The Secret Gate: A True Story of Courage and Sacrifice During the Collapse of Afghanistan". Registration includes lunch.