This former Newsday Middle East bureau chief is a former student of mine who is an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and is also an assistant professor at NYU. I came across his keynote 2009 speech at the City University of New York Baccalaureate Commencement exercise while researching the Do Not Remove Any Documents!!! project. He told the assembled students and families and friends great war stories.
But I know of two he didn’t discuss about his experiences as an undergraduate student journalist who was paying his way through college with freelance fees earned at Newsday as well as with journalism scholarship and award money he had won. He often tipped me off so that I could clue other student journalists trying to jumpstart their careers while working their way through Hunter.
[It’s easy to say that he has contributed to the journalism experiences and careers of Hunter students more than many if any of my colleagues in D:F/M.]
All of his war stories – those told at the commencement and the two that I describe below – attest to his remarkable aplomb in the face of adversity.
Obama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize And They Yowl in Peoria!
Saturday, October 10th, 2009Paraphrasing NY Times Editorial, October 9, 2009: The left yowled that the Nobel committee gave the prize to a wartime president. The right yowled that Obama sold out the country with his diplomacy. The band of George W. Bush loyalists, dwindling, of course, yowled that Obama has not  ended the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Yowling. Yowling. Yowling in Peoria.
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Tags:. Walter Russell Mead, Council on Foreign Relations, Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize, Zbigniew Brzezinski
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