Presented by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Sponsored by:
The Brown Institute for Media Inovation
The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma
The Middle East Institute, Columbia University
Full details below
#CJSMidEast #Mashrou3leila #CJSGlobal
The Columbia Journalism School, in conjunction with the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, and the Middle East Institute of Columbia University, is hosting this mini-conference on alternate narratives of the Middle East.
The premise of the conference is that the primary western narrative concerning the Middle East often casts those who live there as simply perpetrators or victims of violence. This immense oversimplification can have significant impact on both foreign policy and the treatment of diaspora communities.
The event will highlight best practices and offer guidance to journalists and journalism students on covering the people of the region in ways that move beyond the recurring conflict motifs to reveal the diversity and complexity of world views and lived experiences of those in the region.
The conference will be comprised of two morning panel discussions with journalists and journalism educators and an evening event (6-9 pm) with a panel discussion and concert with the renowned Lebanese indie band, Mashrou' Leila. Tickets for the Mashrou' Leila portion of the event can be purchased here.
Born in Tehran and now based in Los Angeles, Dr. Nina Ansary is a historian, human rights advocate, and leading expert on the women's movement in Iran. Her book, Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran, is inspired by her scholarly journey at Columbia University and shatters the stereotypical assumptions and the often misunderstood story of women in Iran today. Since establishing a social media presence in March 2014, Nina has gained support for her cause from over 200,000 followers worldwide and has been voted one of the top social influencers on Iran. She was recently honored as one of "the 21 Leaders of the 21st Century" by Women’s ENews. Nina contributes to The Daily Beast, Womens ENews, BBC, Al Jazeera, and The Huffington Post and serves on the Middle East Institute Advisory Board at Columbia University and on Columbia University’s Global Leadership Council. Visit www.ninaansary.com
Sheila began her reporting career in 1982, when she joined the staff of Philippine Panorama, a widely read magazine. As Ferdinand Marcos gradually lost political power, Sheila reported on human rights abuses, the growing democratic movement, and the election of Corazon Aquino as president. She later joined the staff of The Manila Times as a political reporter, and also wrote special reports for The Manila Chronicle. As a stringer for The New York Times and the Guardian (London), she covered seven attempted coups d'etat against the Aquino government.
In 1989, Sheila and her colleagues founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) to promote investigative reporting. The PCIJ trains journalists in investigative skills, and has provided an environment for in-depth, groundbreaking reporting. The Center has investigated and reported on major social issues including the military, poverty, and corruption. Under Sheila's leadership, the Center became the premier investigative reporting institution in the Philippines and Asia. Sheila is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including "Coups, Cults & Cannibals," a collection of reportage; "The Rulemakers: How the wealthy and well-born dominate Congress;" and "Pork and other Perks: Corruption and Governance in the Philippines." She has received numerous awards and widespread recognition of her work.. She received an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of the Philippines, and a masters in political sociology from the London School of Economics.
Nahed Eltantawy is an Associate Professor of Journalism at High Point University, North Carolina. She teaches a variety of convergent journalism courses as well as women and gender studies. Originally from Egypt, Eltantawy moved to the U.S. in 2000. Prior to that, she lived in Cairo, Egypt, where she worked as a Reuters news correspondent. Her research interests include: media representation of women; media in the Middle East; social media & cyber activism as well as critical & cultural studies. Eltantawy’s work has been published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, International Journal of Communication, Feminist Media Studies and the Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research.
Shahira Fahmy (Ph.D., University of Missouri-Columbia) is the first and only female Arab American tenured journalism faculty member at a research university in the United States. She is a full professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Arizona. She holds adjunct/courtesy joint appointments with the Department of Communication, the School of Government & Public Policy and the School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies. Dr. Fahmy has native fluency in four languages and has served as associate editor for Mass Communication & Society, a Fulbright Specialist Scholar, a fellow at NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, a UN consultant, an international guest editor and keynote speaker and lectured on global and visual communication worldwide.
Lisa Goldman is a contributing editor to +972, a progressive digital magazine based in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, which she co-founded in 2010. She is the former director of the Israel-Palestine Initiative at New America and continues to speak and write widely across media on issues related to the region.
During the Egyptian uprising of 2011, Goldman reported from Cairo for +972, where she was the only journalist in Egypt openly reporting for an Israel-based media outlet.
Goldman’s work for +972 and her commentary for radio and television highlights stories that are counter-intuitive and include less known perspectives The women she covers face significant challenges in the Middle East’s male-dominated and often conservative society, but they are not victims and they do not allow social challenges to limit them professionally.
Her analysis of the Israeli media's coverage of the 2009 Gaza war, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, won the Anna Lindh Journalism Prize for conflict reporting. Born and raised in Canada, she lived for 14 years in the Middle East and relocated to Brooklyn in 2012.
Lonnie Isabel is the former deputy managing editor of Newsday, and was responsible for supervising the national, foreign, state, Washington, health and science staffs.
During his 16-year career at the newspaper, Isabel also served as assistant managing editor, overseeing coverage of the September 11th aftermath and the Iraq War, and as national editor, covering the 2000 presidential campaign and the Oklahoma City bombing.
Earlier in his career, Isabel worked as a reporter and assistant city editor at the Oakland Tribune, and as a political reporter at the Boston Globe. He was appointed a Poynter Ethics Fellow in 2006. He has taught news writing at Hofstra and San Francisco State universities.
He received a B.A. in African Studies from Amherst College.
Alia Malek is a journalist and civil rights lawyer. She is the author of A Country Called Amreeka: US History Re-Told Through Arab American Lives and editor of Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post 9/11 Injustices. Her reportage has appeared in several places including the New York Times, The Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, Jadaliyya, McSweeneys, and Guernica.
Born in Baltimore to Syrian immigrant parents, she began her legal career as a trial attorney at the US Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. After working in the legal field in the US, Lebanon, and the West Bank, Malek, who has degrees from Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities, earned her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.
In April 2011, she moved to Damascus, Syria and wrote anonymously for several outlets from inside the country as it began to disintegrate. In November 2014, she was honored with the Marie Colvin Award for her reporting from Syria.
In May 2013, she returned to the US for the launch of Al Jazeera America, where she was Senior Writer until October 2015.
She is currently the Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and at work on a narrative non-fiction book about Syria, a memoir of family, house, and country.
Souad Mekhennet was born in Germany as the daughter of a Turkish mother and a Moroccan father. As a child she lived in Morocco for three years.
Most time she works as a reporter for the Washington Post Newspaper, German TV channel ZDF and Daily Best. “Lifting the Veil” tells stories of hope, fear and the real life of Muslims throughout the world as Muslim countries undergo dramatic and traumatic changes. With the Middle East, Northern Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan troubled by change and rebellion, Souad Mekhennet concludes what these changes mean for those regions, and defines the challenges they present for Muslims in the West.
Since shortly after September 11 she has been reporting about radical Islamic movements. She is a visiting fellow at the Weatherhead Centre at Harvard University, and at the School for Advanced and International Studies (SAIS) at the John Hopkins University.
Souad Mekhennet was selected a 2014 Young Global Leader: The World Economic Forum honors the most exceptional leaders under the age of 40 from around the world.
In 2013 she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University where she researched the “long-term strategies of terrorist organizations since the Arab Spring”. Between 2004 and 2012, and before her Nieman fellowship, she worked as a reporter for the New York Times.
As a member of the investigative unit at The New York Times she covered subjects like war zones, terrorist attacks and the ‘war of terror’, including deportations and human rights abuses.
She was one of two reporters who broke the story of Khaled el Masri’s extradition case and worked on a series called “Inside the Jihad” for which she and her colleagues interviewed members of radical jihadist organizations all over the world.
Currently she is a moderator and public speaker and works for the Washington Post Newspaper and German TV channel ZDF and has herself been interviewed for various TV and radio shows in the US and Europe.
Helping the next generation of Muslims in the West is one of her other passions, and she has taught and lectured at Harvard University, City University of New York - School of Journalism as well as at the university of Hamburg.
Ahmed Shihab-Eldin is a correspondent/producer with VICE. His prior work includes producing and hosting for HuffPost Live and creating, producing and co-hosting Al Jazeera English’s groundbreaking social media show, “The Stream," an award-winning interactive talk show, which sources stories from social networks. Before joining Al Jazeera English, Ahmed worked as a reporter and producer for The Doha Film Institute, heading the online editorial efforts in the inaugural Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Ahmed also worked as a multimedia producer at PBS’s award-winning documentary series Wide Angle, and as a news producer for The New York Times. His freelance work took him to Lebanon, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, and Boston, Soon after graduating from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Ahmed started teaching as an adjunct professor at the school, teaching digital media, writing for the web, audience and engagement, advising master's projects and serving as a consultant on News21, a collaboration of 12 journalism schools under the Carnegie-Knight initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. Since the Arab uprisings began in 2011, Ahmed has been invited to speak about the democratization of media and the Arab world at media and technology conferences in the USA, Arab world and Europe, including the Google's Zeitgeist 2011 and 2012 conferences. Ahmed was born in California, and spent most of his formative years in Kuwait, Austria and Egypt, where he lived for nearly a decade. His parents were both born in Palestine.
A special thank you to those who helped put this event together:
Firas Abou Fakher; Hind Azennar; Hossam Bahgat; Kelly Boyce; Ann Cooper; Evelyn Corchado; Sheila Coronel; Sara Elkamel; Karim Ghattas; Todd Gitlin; Mark Hansen; Julie Hartenstein; Lonnie Isabel; Michael Krisch; Brinkley Messick; Aimee Rinehart; Chanel Roche; Shirine Saad; Lauren Schaefer; Bruce Shapiro; Ahmed Shihab-Eldin; Alisa Solomon; Sreenath Sreenivasan; Brenna St. George Jones; Sarah Taylor