Presented By: Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies
CMENAS Panel Discussion. Reporting the Middle East and North Africa: Stories, Challenges, and Perspectives
Zahra Nader, Sarah Rahal, Nada Rashwan, Fatemeh Jamalpour
Join us on January 15, 2025, for a panel with Knight-Wallace Fellows exploring the challenges, complexities, and importance of authentic storytelling explore the challenges and rewards of covering the region’s diverse communities, including navigating cultural and political complexities, combating stereotypes, and fostering authentic representation.
Zahra Nader is the founding editor-in-chief of Zan Times, a nonprofit news outlet that covers human rights in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, with a focus on women and gender-based issues. Nader’s journalism journey began in Kabul, where she reported for local and international media, including The New York Times, on sensitive issues such as honor killings, virginity tests, single women-headed households and the social stigma of being a divorcee or a widow. Her work has appeared in publications ranging from Time and Foreign Policy to The Guardian, The Daily Mail and Deutsche Welle. She publishes Zan Times from Canada, working with a group of mostly women journalists and editors, both in Afghanistan and in exile.
Fatemeh Jamalpour is an Iranian journalist who has been interrogated, arrested and jailed by the Iranian government because of her human rights-focused reporting. Over the past 18 years, she has worked as a BBC World newsroom journalist in London, as a freelance documentary filmmaker and as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in Tehran, where she lived when the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement began in 2022. Now in exile in the United States, Jamalpour is co-authoring a book about the women-led uprisings. Blending traditional reportage with cultural memoir, the book looks at the political upheaval in Iran following the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, also known as Jîna Amini, in the custody of the morality police.
Sarah Rahal is the lead city reporter for The Detroit News, where she covers developments within Detroit City Hall and spotlights important local issues — from the struggles and successes of local refugee communities to the impact of scrapyards on public health, crime and the local economy. Her 2023 investigation into the lack of support for kinship caregivers was recognized for “best enterprise reporting” by the Michigan Press Association. A daughter of Lebanese immigrants and a fluent Arabic speaker, Rahal is the Michigan chapter president of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). She and her husband own a family falafel business in Detroit’s Eastern Market.
Nada Rashwan reports on the Middle East and North Africa with a focus on politics and society in Egypt. She has worked for The New York Times, the BBC and Ahram Online, Egypt’s largest English-language news site. Her reporting career was shaped by witnessing the broad social and political transformation following the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Since that period, she has worked across print, radio and television, covering major events in the region, including wars in the Gaza Strip, the rise of ISIS, the Sudanese uprising and the conflict in Yemen.
Moderated by Jay Crisostomo, Interim Director, Center for MIddle Eastern and North African Studies; George G. Cameron Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Civilization and Languages and Civilizations
Register here: https://myumi.ch/3QwyE
Zahra Nader is the founding editor-in-chief of Zan Times, a nonprofit news outlet that covers human rights in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, with a focus on women and gender-based issues. Nader’s journalism journey began in Kabul, where she reported for local and international media, including The New York Times, on sensitive issues such as honor killings, virginity tests, single women-headed households and the social stigma of being a divorcee or a widow. Her work has appeared in publications ranging from Time and Foreign Policy to The Guardian, The Daily Mail and Deutsche Welle. She publishes Zan Times from Canada, working with a group of mostly women journalists and editors, both in Afghanistan and in exile.
Fatemeh Jamalpour is an Iranian journalist who has been interrogated, arrested and jailed by the Iranian government because of her human rights-focused reporting. Over the past 18 years, she has worked as a BBC World newsroom journalist in London, as a freelance documentary filmmaker and as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in Tehran, where she lived when the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement began in 2022. Now in exile in the United States, Jamalpour is co-authoring a book about the women-led uprisings. Blending traditional reportage with cultural memoir, the book looks at the political upheaval in Iran following the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, also known as Jîna Amini, in the custody of the morality police.
Sarah Rahal is the lead city reporter for The Detroit News, where she covers developments within Detroit City Hall and spotlights important local issues — from the struggles and successes of local refugee communities to the impact of scrapyards on public health, crime and the local economy. Her 2023 investigation into the lack of support for kinship caregivers was recognized for “best enterprise reporting” by the Michigan Press Association. A daughter of Lebanese immigrants and a fluent Arabic speaker, Rahal is the Michigan chapter president of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). She and her husband own a family falafel business in Detroit’s Eastern Market.
Nada Rashwan reports on the Middle East and North Africa with a focus on politics and society in Egypt. She has worked for The New York Times, the BBC and Ahram Online, Egypt’s largest English-language news site. Her reporting career was shaped by witnessing the broad social and political transformation following the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Since that period, she has worked across print, radio and television, covering major events in the region, including wars in the Gaza Strip, the rise of ISIS, the Sudanese uprising and the conflict in Yemen.
Moderated by Jay Crisostomo, Interim Director, Center for MIddle Eastern and North African Studies; George G. Cameron Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Civilization and Languages and Civilizations
Register here: https://myumi.ch/3QwyE
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