Peter Lippman, native of Seattle, is a lifelong human rights activist and a writer, Yiddishist, and klezmer musician. He has a history of witnessing the resistance of people and communities to injustice in such places as Nicaragua, Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine, and most recently, Ukraine.

Mr. Lippman traveled to Ukraine last October on an assignment to speak with people at Karazin University in Kharkiv, in the eastern part of the country. Along the way, he spent time meeting people and talking to them in Lviv (where his grandmother was born), Kyiv, and Chernihiv. Lippman learned first-hand what Ukrainians had to say about what they've been experiencing; how they feel now about using Russian vs. Ukrainian language; how they feel about Russians; what their hopes were for the future.