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| Pintak |
PULLMAN Lawrence Pintak, an internationally recognized journalist and educator, has been named founding dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication. He will begin his new duties Aug. 17.
Pintak has served as a journalist more than 30 years on four continents, working with leading media including The New York Times, CBS, ABC, The San Francisco Chronicle.
As CBS News Middle East correspondent in the 1980s, he covered the Iran-Iraq War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the rise of Hezbollah and the birth of suicide bombing including the 1983 destruction of the Beirut U.S. Marine barracks. In the 1990s, he reported on the overthrow of Indonesian President Suharto for The San Francisco Chronicle and ABC News.
Pintak, who holds an MPhil in Islamic Studies from the University of Wales/Lampeter, has spent the past four years as director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at The American University in Cairo, where he has run the only graduate degree program in journalism in the Arab world and a variety of training programs for professional journalists.
He specializes in: the role of media in shaping policy and the perceptions of policy; the intersection of media, religion and conflict; and the impact of technology, culture and globalization on journalism.
“Dr. Pintak is an outstanding candidate to serve as the college’s founding dean,” said Warwick M. Bayly, provost and executive vice president.. “His background is tailor-made for this position.”
“Heading the center here in Cairo has put me at the heart of Arab journalism at a fascinating time in its evolution,” said Pintak. “But American journalism like the global media industry as a whole is in the midst of revolution and the opportunity to help shape its course at the helm of a new communication college is difficult to pass up.
“And as someone steeped in the Murrow legacy at CBS known as ‘the house that Murrow built’ serving as dean of a college that bears his name is a particular honor.”
Pintak created the online publication Arab Media & Society, several internet resource sites for Arab civil society and media and the first “virtual newsroom” in Second Life.
His latest book is “ Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas” (2006), which Middle East Journal called “an example of the best of contemporary journalism.” Other books he authored include Beirut Outtakes: A TV Correspondent’s Portrait of America’s Encounter with Terror (Lexington 1988), Seeds of Hate: How America’s flawed Middle East policy ignited the jihad (Pluto 2003), and Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas, which will be published in January 2006 (Pluto Books UK/Univ of Michigan Press).
His columns and op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Daily Star Beirut, The Daily News Cairo, Arab News, Gulf News, Tempo (Indonesia), The Jakarta Post, Al-Shurooq Egypt, the Turkish Daily News and other newspapers in the Middle East and Muslim world, along with Columbia Journalism Review online, Newsweek.com, WashingtonPost.com, CommonDreams.org and a variety of U.S. and European outlets.
Pintak may be reached at lpintak@aucegypt.edu.
To view a selection of his articles, click here.
