Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism: Speaker Bios

2007 Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism

Women and Islam: Understanding and Reporting

Keynote:

William L. Nash is the director of the Center for Preventive Action, the conflict prevention initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations. A retired U.S. Army Major General, Nash commanded the 1st Armored Division of the U.S. Army when it went to Bosnia in 1995 for a year as a peacekeeping operation.

Panelists:

Geneive Abdo is a senior analyst for the Muslim World Project at the Gallup Organization. She is the author of Mecca and Main Street, a new book from Oxford University Press about American Muslim communities. Abdo has been reporting on Islam for approximately 15 years for The Boston Globe, as well as the Guardian and Economist. Abdo, an American of Lebanese descent, is also the author of several other books.

Huda Ahmed is the 2006-07 Elizabeth Neuffer IWMF Fellow. Ahmed has been a reporter for Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) in Baghdad since 2004. She previously worked as an interpreter, researcher and reporter for The Washington Post and as a translator for The Daily Baghdad Observer and Al Jumhurriya Daily, all in Baghdad. Ahmed has written about the issues of women and children at risk in a war zone, the struggles of women in politics in a Muslim society, and human rights abuses by police and occupying forces.

Irfana Anwer is the executive director of KARAMAH, or Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. She has experience in working with South Asian grassroots organizations. Anwer has also worked closely with the South Asian community in the Arab world and actively supports the women's movement in the Muslim world. She has a law degree from University of Essex ( England) and is a member of Lincolns Inn. She is also a member of the New York Bar.

Kishwer Falkner , Baroness of Margravine, is a f ellow at th e Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She leads a series of seminars on U.S. foreign policy and liberal democracy in the Islamic world. Falkner is a Liberal Democrat Peer in the House of Lords and the first Muslim frontbencher in Britain. Born in Pakistan, Falkner was naturalized as a citizen in the United Kingdom in 1983.

Dr. Lily Zakiyah Munir is a leading Indonesian Muslim human rights activist. She is the director of the Jakarta-based Centre for Pesantren and Democracy Studies that works with the ‘ulama and pesantrens, or students of Indonesian Islamic boarding schools. Munir was an international commissioner of the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) of Afghanistan, a research fellow in the Islam and Human Rights program of the School of Law of Emory University and a visiting lecturer on women’s/human rights under Shariah at the University of South Carolina’s School of Law. Her lectures covered three main areas: Introduction to Islamic Law, Islam and Human Rights, and Islamic Feminism.

The Elizabeth Neuffer IWMF Fund is generously supported by The Boston Globe, Peter Canellos, Carolyn Lee, MIT Center for International Studies, Mark Neuffer, the United Nations Foundation and Friends of Elizabeth Neuffer.

Questions