In 2018, The New York Times and the George Washington University announced a strategic partnership to digitize, translate, analyze, and publish over 15,000 pages of internal documents produced by ISIS, obtained by Times investigative journalist Rukmini Callimachi and her Iraqi colleagues during embeds with the Iraqi army.
With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and other funders, GW’s Program on Extremism and Libraries and Academic Innovation have undertaken extensive work to analyze, preserve and present the information contained in The ISIS Files in an accurate, accessible, ethical, secure, and impartial manner. This work has taken place through scores of interviews with prospective researchers and users, and through a series of public events. As part of the project, GW hosted research fellow Omar Mohammed, also known as the “Mosul Eye,” for a campus visit in January 2020, to discuss Mosul After ISIS.
Since launching the ISIS Files website in June 2020, GW has hosted a series of scholarly conversations based on reviews of the documents. Additional collections of primary source materials upon which the analysis is based continue to be reviewed and uploaded.
