Flash Point: India, Pakistan, Kashmir

SPEAKER BIOS

Peter Bergen is a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C; an Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University; a research fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security; CNN’s terrorism analyst and author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Bin Laden. (Free Press, 2001). Holy War, Inc. was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into eighteen languages. A documentary based on Holy War, Inc., which aired on National Geographic Television, was nominated for an Emmy in the research category. His most recent book is The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader (Free Press, 2006).It was named one of the best non-fiction books of 2006 by The Washington Post. Bergen has written for a variety of publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, TIME, The Nation, The National Interest, Mother Jones, Washington Times, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and Prospect. He has also worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Television and DiscoveryTelevision. He is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict& Terrorism, a leading scholarly journal in the field. In January 2008 Bergen will start teaching at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Steve Coll is President & CEO of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper’s managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is the author of six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC’s battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

Mr. Coll’s professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these, for explanatory journalism, in 1990, for his series, with David A. Vise, about the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005, for his book, Ghost Wars, which also won the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross award; the Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing. Mr. Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude, from Occidental College in 1980 with a degree in English and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Arif Jamal is a contributing writer to the New York Times. He is currently a fellow at New York University. A leading Pakistani reporter, he has written for the Pakistan Times. The News, and international media such as Radio France International and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Basharat Peer, a journalist from India via Kashmir and New Delhi, was recently an assistant editor at Foreign Affairs. His new book, Curfewed Night, will be published by Scribner this year. He was born in Kashmir in 1977. He studied political science at Aligarh Muslim University and journalism at Columbia University. He has worked as a reporter at Rediff and Tehelka and has written for various publications including the Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman and Foreign Affairs.

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Asia Society is the leading global and pan-Asian organization working to strengthen relationships and promote understanding among the people, leaders, and institutions of the United States and Asia. We seek to increase knowledge and enhance dialogue, encourage creative expression, and generate new ideas across the fields of policy, business, education, arts, and culture.

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Asia Society was founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd. Initially established to promote greater knowledge of Asia in the U.S., the Society today is a global institution—with offices throughout the U.S. and Asia—that fulfills its educational mandate through a wide range of cross-disciplinary programming. As economies and cultures have become more interconnected, the Society’s programs have expanded to address Asian American issues, the effects of globalization, and pressing concerns in Asia including human rights, the status of women, and environmental and global health issues such as HIV/AIDS.