Jonathan Curiel's Articles and Bio

Jonathan Curiel

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From a reporting trip to Tehran, Iran, in 2004

Jonathan Curiel is a journalist in San Francisco and the author of Al’ America: Travels Through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots. The book, published by The New Press in November of 2008 (and republished in paperback in November of 2009), details the historic influence of Arab and Muslim culture on America, from the time of Columbus to the modern age. Among the areas covered: Islamic architecture and its melding into San Antonio’s historic Alamo building and New York’s World Trade Center; Arab music and its impact on The Doors, Bob Dylan, and the Jefferson Airplane; Persian poetry and its sway over Ralph Waldo Emerson; Americans’ love for Arabic tattoos and Persian carpets; New Orleans’ French Quarter and its link to Islamic aesthetics; and Elvis Presley’s and P.T. Barnum’s connections to Arab and Muslim culture. The book received a 2008 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was named one of 2008’s Top 10 booksby London journalist Joel Schalit. Almost 500 libraries (including the British Library, Canada’s national library, the National Library of Australia, the National Library of China in Beijing, and libraries at Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, MIT, the University of Toronto, the University of Bahrain, and Turkey’s Middle East Technical University in Ankara) have the book, which is being translated into Arabic by Arab Scientific Publishers, the Beirut publishing house that also brought out The Da Vinci Code. (For more about Al’ America – including excerpts of reviews by the Washington Post, which called it “a pleasurable read,” and Publishers Weekly, which said “Curiel’s cultural odyssey moves swiftly and engagingly across time and geography” – click here.) From October of 2005 to April of 2006, Curiel was a Reuters Foundation Fellow at Oxford University in England, where he researched and wrote a 10,000-word paper on the historic impact of Islamic architecture on synagogue and church architecture. During the 1993-1994 academic year, Curiel lived in Lahore, Pakistan, where he taught journalism as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the Punjab. In 2005, Curiel's work for the San Francisco Chronicle was honored by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. (Curiel, a staff writer at the Chronicle from April of 1985 to August of 2009, was one of a select number of American journalists -- including CBS's Ed Bradley -- cited by Columbia University for doing outstanding articles or programs on race and ethnicity.) Curiel has written freelance stories for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, American Journalism Review, Salon, GlobalPost (the foreign affairs site), Ode magazine, the Advocate magazine, Nextbook (now called Tablet), Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, and The Wire (a London music magazine), and has done freelance work for Sight & Sound, TV Guide and Maclean's magazine (Canada's equivalent of Time and Newsweek). His articles have been reprinted in such publications as The Globe and Mail (Canada's national daily newspaper), Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Orange County Register, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Hartford Courant, New York Post and New York Daily News. Besides the United States, Curiel has reported from Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Japan, Egypt, Morocco and Mali. For the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival (the oldest film festival in the Americas) he was a juror for the $10,000 Skyy Prize. For Harlan Jacobson’s Talk Cinema, he has spoken about such films as The Kite Runner, The Triplets of Belleville, and the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others and An Inconvenient Truth. Curiel has been a moderator, panelist or speaker at the Commonwealth Club, the World Affairs Council, Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford (England), and the Foundation Royaumont outside of Paris. In Tangier, Morocco, he gave a keynote address at Performing Tangier 2008: Borders, Beats and Beyond, an academic conference organized by the Tangier-based International Centre for Performance Studies. In the Fall 2009 semester, Curiel is teaching a journalism course at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in Los Angeles. In February of 2010, he will be an O’Donnell Visiting Educator at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. For ’Round the World We Go – Curiel’s blog about world affairs, politics, and other subjects – click here.

Recent Adventures

(Photos 1-12 copyright Jonathan Curiel)
Click on photos for bigger images

The great mud mosque in Djenne, Mali, taken during my trip to
West Africa in 2003.

The Niger river in Mali.

Another view of the Niger.

Members of the musical group Tinariwen, standing in the sands
of the Sahara desert. The group performed at the Festival in the
Desert, an annual event in Mali that brings musicians (and others)
from around the world to the farthermost regions of the country.
The 2003 festival took place in Essakane, Mali. I wrote about it
for the San Francisco Chronicle and a London magazine called
The Wire.

Young men standing in the dunes of Essakane, in the Sahara desert.

Me and the Malian singer Oumou Sangare, standing in the lobby
of Sangare's hotel in Bamako (Mali's capital).

Looking out onto the snowy Alborz Mountains, which surround
Tehran, taking during my trip to Iran in 2004. I wrote several
stories during my trip there, including a piece about Iran's
annual film festival, which some have compared to Cannes.

An anti-U.S. rally that I witnessed in Tehran during my 2004 trip
to Iran.

A view from atop a church in Oxford, England, where I was a
Reuters Foundation fellow during the 2005-2006 academic year.

Pianist Randy Weston playing with Gnawa musician Abdellah
El Gourd (far right) in Tangier, Morocco, at Performing Tangier 2008.

An alleyway in the medina of Tangier, Morocco.

A coastal view of Tangier, Morocco, with Spain in the distance.

Older Adventures
(Photos 1-5 copyright Jonathan Curiel)
Click on photos for bigger images

A street view of Jaipur, the capital of India’s state of Rajasthan – 1993

In Pakistan, on the road to Gilgit, in the country’s north – 1993

An aerial view of the Pyramids in Giza, showing their geographical
connection to urban Cairo – 1990

Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy – 1990

Under the Eiffel Tower in Paris – 1990

PEOPLE INTERVIEWED OR PROFILED:

POLITICS-SOCIAL AFFAIRS-
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
(Names in red are linked to articles)

Paul Kagame (president of Rwanda)

Romeo Dallaire (former head of U.N. in Rwanda)

Condoleezza Rice (before her position as Secretary of State)

Jimmy Carter (podcast interview)

Noam Chomsky (MIT professor)

Edward Said (Columbia university professor)

Nawal El Saadawi (Egyptian activist-author)

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (former U.N. Secretary-General)

Jose Maria Aznar (then-Spanish Prime Minister)

John Dean (Watergate figure)

George Shultz (Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan)

Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy)

Col. Peter Mansoor (U.S. commander in Iraq war, and former advisor to Gen. David Petraeus; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club)

Nabil Shaath (Palestinian foreign minister)

Hanan Ashrawi (Palestinian Legislative Council)

Leila Khaled (former Palestinian hijacker; interviewed in Amman, Jordan)

Queen Noor of Jordan

Benazir Bhutto (former Pakistan prime minister -- podcast interview)

Jehan Sadat (widow of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat)

Ehud Barak (Israel's former prime minister)

Natan Sharansky (Israeli official, former Soviet dissident)

Yossi Beilin (Israel's former justice minister)

Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah (former spiritual leader of Hezbollah;
interviewed in Beirut)

Wangari Maathai (2004 winner of Nobel Peace Prize)

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Africa’s first elected woman president)

Kavita Ramdas (Head of Global Fund for Women)

Willie Brown (San Francisco mayor)

Judea Pearl (father of slain reporter Daniel Pearl)

Scott Ritter (former U.N. arms inspector)

Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers)

Helen Caldicott (anti-nuclear activist)

Kenneth Roth (executive director of Human Rights Watch)

Peter Singer (bioethics professor at Princeton University)

Francis Fukuyama ("End of History" professor)

Shirin Ebadi (Iranian activist, Nobel Prize winner)

Cindy Sheehan (peace activist)

Howard Zinn (professor, "A People's History of the United States")

Shibley Telhami (University of Maryland professor) - one of several pre-Iraq War articles -- see story links above with Scott Ritter and Daniel Ellsberg -- that were critical of Washington's plans for war.

Judith Kipper (Center for Strategic and International Studies)

Kanan Makiya (Iraqi professor at Brandeis University)

Bernard Lewis (Princeton emeritus professor, author of "What Went Wrong?")

Julian Bond (chairman of NAACP)

Jerry Brown (former California governor)

Gary Hart (former U.S. Senator)

Ralph Nader (activist, presidential candidate)

Farah Pahlavi (former queen of Iran, married to the Shah)

Prince Turki al-Faisal (then-Saudi Ambassador to the United States)

Sediqullah Rahi (brother of former Afghan president Mohammed Najibullah; one of the first articles anywhere to profile Fremont's Afghan community)

Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University professor, author of “The Iron Cage”)

Marwan Muasher (Jordan’s ex-deputy prime minister; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club, recorded for fora.tv)

Hamza Yusuf (Muslim scholar)

Azhar Usman (stand-up comic)

Sakeena Yacoobi (Afghan women's leader)

Thomas Schelling (Nobel laureate in Economics)

Sebastiao Salgado (photographer)

AUTHORS-WRITERS-JOURNALISTS

Gore Vidal (novelist)

Isabel Allende (Chilean American novelist)

Orhan Pamuk (Turkish novelist)

Terry Gross (NPR radio host)

Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988; interviewed in Cairo)

Irshad Manji (Toronto writer-broadcaster)

Robert Fisk (Middle East correspondent)

Sayed Kashua (writer, “Palestinian Seinfeld”)

Jamal Dajani (senior director of Middle East programming at Link TV; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club as part of panel discussion about the prospects for a state of Palestine; recorded by FORA.tv)

Ahmed Rashid (Central Asia correspondent, author of "Taliban")

Hamid Mir (Pakistani journalist who met three times with Osama bin Laden; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club, recorded by FORA.tv)

Thomas Ricks (Washington Post military correspondent, author of “Fiasco” and “The Gamble”; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club, recorded by FORA.tv)

Robert Baer (former CIA agent whose memoir inspired the movie “Syriana”; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club)

Ishmael Reed (novelist poet-playwright)

Arundhati Roy ("The God of Small Things," "An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire")

Diana Abu-Jaber (novelist, "Arabian Jazz," "Crescent")

Azar Nafisi (professor, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran")

Rabih Alameddine (novelist, author of "The Hakawati")

Mahmoud Darwish (poet)

Naif al-Mutawa (Kuwaiti creator of “The 99” comic superheroes; written for GlobalPost)

Lewis Lapham (editor of Harper's Magazine)

Josef Skvorecky (Czech novelist)

Martin Amis (British novelist)

Studs Terkel (books include "Working")

Amy Tan (author, "The Joy Luck Club")

David Halberstam (author-journalist, "The Best and the Brightest")

Deborah Tannen (linguist, "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation")

Jamling Tenzing Norgay (author "The sherpa's son also rises")

Tobias Schneebaum (author, "Keep the River on Your Right")

F.X. Toole (author of "Rope Burns," which begat the movie "Million Dollar Baby")

Paul Krugman (New York Times columnist)

John Perkins (author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club)

Marjane Satrapi (Iranian author of “Persepolis” graphic novels)

FILM

(Click here to read my reviews of such movies as “Bowling for Columbine,” “Machuca,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Crimson Gold,” “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” “Saving Marriage” and “Waltz With Bashir”)

Michael Moore ("Fahrenheit 9/11")

Omar Sharif (actor best known for "Lawrence of Arabia")

Shohreh Aghdashloo (Oscar-nominated actress from "House of Sand and Fog")

Mira Sorvino (actress)

Jackie Chan (actor)

Warren Beatty (actor)

Steve Martin (writer-actor)

Ben Kingsley (actor)

Jennifer Aniston (actress)

Chris Nolan (director, "Memento," "Insomnia")

Sherman Alexie (director-author, "The Business of Fancydancing")

Mira Nair (filmmaker, "Monsoon Wedding,", "Salaam Bombay")

Gurinder Chadha (filmmaker, "Bend It Like Bekham")

Shekhar Kapur (director-India, "Bandit Queen")

Chen Kaige (filmmaker-China, "Farwewell My Concubine")

John Woo (director, "Face/Off," "Broken Arrow")

Zhang Yimou (filmmaker-China, "Raise the Red Lantern," "Ju Dou")

Amos Gitai (Israeli filmmaker, "Kedma," "Kadosh")

Eytan Fox (Israeli filmmaker, "Walk on Water," "Yossi & Jagger")

Nir Bergman (Israeli filmmaker, "Broken Wings")

Yisrael Campbell (Israeli stand-up comic, subject of documentary “Circumcise Me”)

Walter Salles (Brazilian filmmaker, "Central Station," "The Motorcycle Diaries")

Jehane Noujaim (documentarian, "Control Room")

Volker Schlondorff (German director, "Circle of Deceit," "The Tin Drum")

Sandra Nettelbeck (German director, "Mostly Martha")

Siddiq Barmak (Afghan director, "Osama")

Cheick Oumar Sissoko (Malian filmmaker, "Guimba")

Gillo Pontecorvo (Italian filmmaker, "Battle of Algiers")

Sylvain Chomet (French filmmaker, "The Triplets of Belleville")

Fabian Bielinsky (Argentine filmmaker, "Nine Queens")

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Mexican director, "Amores Perros")

Niki Caro (New Zealand filmmaker, "The Whale Rider")

Takeshi Kitano (Japanese director)

Majid Majidi (Iranian director, "The Color of Paradise," "Children of Heaven")

Elia Suleiman (Israeli-Palestinian filmmaker, "Divine Intervention")

Bahman Ghobadi (Iranian director, "Marooned in Iraq")

Babak Payami (Iranian director, "Secret Ballot")

Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Iranian director, "Kandahar," "The Cyclist")

Jafar Panahi (Iranian director, "Crimson Gold," "The Circle")

Abbas Kiarostami (Iranian director, "Ten," "A Taste of Cherry")

Ken Loach (British filmmaker)

Armando Iannucci (British writer-director “In the Loop,” “The Thick of It”)

Paul Greengrass (British director, “Bourne,” “Bloody Sunday”)

James Nesbitt (Irish actor)

Costa Gavras (Greek-French filmmaker, "Missing")

MUSIC

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Pakistan qawwali singer)

Ravi Shankar (Indian sitarist)

Ali Akbar Khan (Indian sarodist)

Zakir Hussain (tabla player)

Ali Farka Toure (Mali)

Vieux Farka Toure (Mali)

Oumou Sangare (Mali)

Boubacar Traore (Mali)

Issa Bagayogo (Mali)

Habib Koite (Mali)

Rokia Traore (Mali)

Youssou N'Dour (Senegal)

Baaba Maal (Senegal)

Marco Senghor (Senegalese-American DJ and restaurateur)

Angelique Kidjo (Benin-U.S.)

Alpha Blondy (Ivory Coast)

Thomas Mapfumo (Zimbabwe)

Oliver Mtukudzi (Zimbabwe)

Fela Kuti (Nigerian superstar; a feature on the 10th anniversary of his death, for Obit magazine)

Khaled (French Algerian)

Cheikha Rimitti (Algeria)

Rachid Taha (French Algerian)

Souad Massi (French Algerian)

Tinariwen (Touareg-Mali)

Kayhan Kalhor (Iran)

Googoosh (Iran)

Hassan Hakmoun (Moroccan American)

David Harrington (Kronos Quartet violinist)

McCoy Tyner (jazz pianist from John Coltrane's quartet)

Bela Fleck (banjo player)

John Adams (Pulitzer Prize-winning composer)

Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin)

Ray Manzarek (keyboardist of The Doors; interviewed for “Al’ America”)

G.E. Smith (guitarist, former “Saturday Night Live” bandleader; interviewed for “Al’ America”)

Dick Dale (singer-guitarist, best known for “Miserlou,” which anchored Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”; interviewed for “Al’ America”)

Wanda Jackson (rock singer who performed with Elvis Presley in the 1950s and is still going strong)

Marcel Khalife (Lebanese oudist, composer)

Kazem al-Sahir (Iraqi singer)

Ustad Farida Mahwash (Afghan singer)

Johsua Nelson (“Kosher Gospel” singer)

Chava Alberstein (Israeli singer)

Daniel Barenboim (international conductor)

Inbar Bakal (Israeli singer; written for GlobalPost)

Natacha Atlas (Egyptian-British singer)

	Jonathan Curiel	HOME - AL' AMERICA - APPEARANCES - CONTACT
From a reporting trip to Tehran, Iran, in 2004 Jonathan Curiel is a journalist in San Francisco and the author of Al’ America: Travels Through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots. The book, published by The New Press in November of 2008 (and republished in paperback in November of 2009), details the historic influence of Arab and Muslim culture on America, from the time of Columbus to the modern age. Among the areas covered: Islamic architecture and its melding into San Antonio’s historic Alamo building and New York’s World Trade Center; Arab music and its impact on The Doors, Bob Dylan, and the Jefferson Airplane; Persian poetry and its sway over Ralph Waldo Emerson; Americans’ love for Arabic tattoos and Persian carpets; New Orleans’ French Quarter and its link to Islamic aesthetics; and Elvis Presley’s and P.T. Barnum’s connections to Arab and Muslim culture. The book received a 2008 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and was named one of 2008’s Top 10 booksby London journalist Joel Schalit. Almost 500 libraries (including the British Library, Canada’s national library, the National Library of Australia, the National Library of China in Beijing, and libraries at Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, MIT, the University of Toronto, the University of Bahrain, and Turkey’s Middle East Technical University in Ankara) have the book, which is being translated into Arabic by Arab Scientific Publishers, the Beirut publishing house that also brought out The Da Vinci Code. (For more about Al’ America – including excerpts of reviews by the Washington Post, which called it “a pleasurable read,” and Publishers Weekly, which said “Curiel’s cultural odyssey moves swiftly and engagingly across time and geography” – click here.) From October of 2005 to April of 2006, Curiel was a Reuters Foundation Fellow at Oxford University in England, where he researched and wrote a 10,000-word paper on the historic impact of Islamic architecture on synagogue and church architecture. During the 1993-1994 academic year, Curiel lived in Lahore, Pakistan, where he taught journalism as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the Punjab. In 2005, Curiel's work for the San Francisco Chronicle was honored by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. (Curiel, a staff writer at the Chronicle from April of 1985 to August of 2009, was one of a select number of American journalists -- including CBS's Ed Bradley -- cited by Columbia University for doing outstanding articles or programs on race and ethnicity.) Curiel has written freelance stories for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, American Journalism Review, Salon, GlobalPost (the foreign affairs site), Ode magazine, the Advocate magazine, Nextbook (now called Tablet), Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, and The Wire (a London music magazine), and has done freelance work for Sight & Sound, TV Guide and Maclean's magazine (Canada's equivalent of Time and Newsweek). His articles have been reprinted in such publications as The Globe and Mail (Canada's national daily newspaper), Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Orange County Register, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Hartford Courant, New York Post and New York Daily News. Besides the United States, Curiel has reported from Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Japan, Egypt, Morocco and Mali. For the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival (the oldest film festival in the Americas) he was a juror for the $10,000 Skyy Prize. For Harlan Jacobson’s Talk Cinema, he has spoken about such films as The Kite Runner, The Triplets of Belleville, and the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others and An Inconvenient Truth. Curiel has been a moderator, panelist or speaker at the Commonwealth Club, the World Affairs Council, Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford (England), and the Foundation Royaumont outside of Paris. In Tangier, Morocco, he gave a keynote address at Performing Tangier 2008: Borders, Beats and Beyond, an academic conference organized by the Tangier-based International Centre for Performance Studies. In the Fall 2009 semester, Curiel is teaching a journalism course at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in Los Angeles. In February of 2010, he will be an O’Donnell Visiting Educator at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. For ’Round the World We Go – Curiel’s blog about world affairs, politics, and other subjects – click here. Recent Adventures (Photos 1-12 copyright Jonathan Curiel) Click on photos for bigger images The great mud mosque in Djenne, Mali, taken during my trip to West Africa in 2003. The Niger river in Mali. Another view of the Niger. Members of the musical group Tinariwen, standing in the sands of the Sahara desert. The group performed at the Festival in the Desert, an annual event in Mali that brings musicians (and others) from around the world to the farthermost regions of the country. The 2003 festival took place in Essakane, Mali. I wrote about it for the San Francisco Chronicle and a London magazine called The Wire. Young men standing in the dunes of Essakane, in the Sahara desert. Me and the Malian singer Oumou Sangare, standing in the lobby of Sangare's hotel in Bamako (Mali's capital). Looking out onto the snowy Alborz Mountains, which surround Tehran, taking during my trip to Iran in 2004. I wrote several stories during my trip there, including a piece about Iran's annual film festival, which some have compared to Cannes. An anti-U.S. rally that I witnessed in Tehran during my 2004 trip to Iran. A view from atop a church in Oxford, England, where I was a Reuters Foundation fellow during the 2005-2006 academic year. Pianist Randy Weston playing with Gnawa musician Abdellah El Gourd (far right) in Tangier, Morocco, at Performing Tangier 2008. An alleyway in the medina of Tangier, Morocco. A coastal view of Tangier, Morocco, with Spain in the distance. Older Adventures (Photos 1-5 copyright Jonathan Curiel) Click on photos for bigger images A street view of Jaipur, the capital of India’s state of Rajasthan – 1993 In Pakistan, on the road to Gilgit, in the country’s north – 1993 An aerial view of the Pyramids in Giza, showing their geographical connection to urban Cairo – 1990 Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy – 1990 Under the Eiffel Tower in Paris – 1990	PEOPLE INTERVIEWED OR PROFILED: POLITICS-SOCIAL AFFAIRS- INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (Names in red are linked to articles) Paul Kagame (president of Rwanda) Romeo Dallaire (former head of U.N. in Rwanda) Condoleezza Rice (before her position as Secretary of State) Jimmy Carter (podcast interview) Noam Chomsky (MIT professor) Edward Said (Columbia university professor) Nawal El Saadawi (Egyptian activist-author) Boutros Boutros-Ghali (former U.N. Secretary-General) Jose Maria Aznar (then-Spanish Prime Minister) John Dean (Watergate figure) George Shultz (Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan) Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy) Col. Peter Mansoor (U.S. commander in Iraq war, and former advisor to Gen. David Petraeus; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club) Nabil Shaath (Palestinian foreign minister) Hanan Ashrawi (Palestinian Legislative Council) Leila Khaled (former Palestinian hijacker; interviewed in Amman, Jordan) Queen Noor of Jordan Benazir Bhutto (former Pakistan prime minister -- podcast interview) Jehan Sadat (widow of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat) Ehud Barak (Israel's former prime minister) Natan Sharansky (Israeli official, former Soviet dissident) Yossi Beilin (Israel's former justice minister) Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah (former spiritual leader of Hezbollah; interviewed in Beirut) Wangari Maathai (2004 winner of Nobel Peace Prize) Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Africa’s first elected woman president) Kavita Ramdas (Head of Global Fund for Women) Willie Brown (San Francisco mayor) Judea Pearl (father of slain reporter Daniel Pearl) Scott Ritter (former U.N. arms inspector) Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) Helen Caldicott (anti-nuclear activist) Kenneth Roth (executive director of Human Rights Watch) Peter Singer (bioethics professor at Princeton University) Francis Fukuyama ("End of History" professor) Shirin Ebadi (Iranian activist, Nobel Prize winner) Cindy Sheehan (peace activist) Howard Zinn (professor, "A People's History of the United States") Shibley Telhami (University of Maryland professor) - one of several pre-Iraq War articles -- see story links above with Scott Ritter and Daniel Ellsberg -- that were critical of Washington's plans for war. Judith Kipper (Center for Strategic and International Studies) Kanan Makiya (Iraqi professor at Brandeis University) Bernard Lewis (Princeton emeritus professor, author of "What Went Wrong?") Julian Bond (chairman of NAACP) Jerry Brown (former California governor) Gary Hart (former U.S. Senator) Ralph Nader (activist, presidential candidate) Farah Pahlavi (former queen of Iran, married to the Shah) Prince Turki al-Faisal (then-Saudi Ambassador to the United States) Sediqullah Rahi (brother of former Afghan president Mohammed Najibullah; one of the first articles anywhere to profile Fremont's Afghan community) Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University professor, author of “The Iron Cage”) Marwan Muasher (Jordan’s ex-deputy prime minister; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club, recorded for fora.tv) Hamza Yusuf (Muslim scholar) Azhar Usman (stand-up comic) Sakeena Yacoobi (Afghan women's leader) Thomas Schelling (Nobel laureate in Economics) Sebastiao Salgado (photographer) AUTHORS-WRITERS-JOURNALISTS Gore Vidal (novelist) Isabel Allende (Chilean American novelist) Orhan Pamuk (Turkish novelist) Terry Gross (NPR radio host) Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988; interviewed in Cairo) Irshad Manji (Toronto writer-broadcaster) Robert Fisk (Middle East correspondent) Sayed Kashua (writer, “Palestinian Seinfeld”) Jamal Dajani (senior director of Middle East programming at Link TV; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club as part of panel discussion about the prospects for a state of Palestine; recorded by FORA.tv) Ahmed Rashid (Central Asia correspondent, author of "Taliban") Hamid Mir (Pakistani journalist who met three times with Osama bin Laden; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club, recorded by FORA.tv) Thomas Ricks (Washington Post military correspondent, author of “Fiasco” and “The Gamble”; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club, recorded by FORA.tv) Robert Baer (former CIA agent whose memoir inspired the movie “Syriana”; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club) Ishmael Reed (novelist poet-playwright) Arundhati Roy ("The God of Small Things," "An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire") Diana Abu-Jaber (novelist, "Arabian Jazz," "Crescent") Azar Nafisi (professor, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran") Rabih Alameddine (novelist, author of "The Hakawati") Mahmoud Darwish (poet) Naif al-Mutawa (Kuwaiti creator of “The 99” comic superheroes; written for GlobalPost) Lewis Lapham (editor of Harper's Magazine) Josef Skvorecky (Czech novelist) Martin Amis (British novelist) Studs Terkel (books include "Working") Amy Tan (author, "The Joy Luck Club") David Halberstam (author-journalist, "The Best and the Brightest") Deborah Tannen (linguist, "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation") Jamling Tenzing Norgay (author "The sherpa's son also rises") Tobias Schneebaum (author, "Keep the River on Your Right") F.X. Toole (author of "Rope Burns," which begat the movie "Million Dollar Baby") Paul Krugman (New York Times columnist) John Perkins (author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”; onstage interview at Commonwealth Club) Marjane Satrapi (Iranian author of “Persepolis” graphic novels) FILM (Click here to read my reviews of such movies as “Bowling for Columbine,” “Machuca,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Crimson Gold,” “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” “Saving Marriage” and “Waltz With Bashir”) Michael Moore ("Fahrenheit 9/11") Omar Sharif (actor best known for "Lawrence of Arabia") Shohreh Aghdashloo (Oscar-nominated actress from "House of Sand and Fog") Mira Sorvino (actress) Jackie Chan (actor) Warren Beatty (actor) Steve Martin (writer-actor) Ben Kingsley (actor) Jennifer Aniston (actress) Chris Nolan (director, "Memento," "Insomnia") Sherman Alexie (director-author, "The Business of Fancydancing") Mira Nair (filmmaker, "Monsoon Wedding,", "Salaam Bombay") Gurinder Chadha (filmmaker, "Bend It Like Bekham") Shekhar Kapur (director-India, "Bandit Queen") Chen Kaige (filmmaker-China, "Farwewell My Concubine") John Woo (director, "Face/Off," "Broken Arrow") Zhang Yimou (filmmaker-China, "Raise the Red Lantern," "Ju Dou") Amos Gitai (Israeli filmmaker, "Kedma," "Kadosh") Eytan Fox (Israeli filmmaker, "Walk on Water," "Yossi & Jagger") Nir Bergman (Israeli filmmaker, "Broken Wings") Yisrael Campbell (Israeli stand-up comic, subject of documentary “Circumcise Me”) Walter Salles (Brazilian filmmaker, "Central Station," "The Motorcycle Diaries") Jehane Noujaim (documentarian, "Control Room") Volker Schlondorff (German director, "Circle of Deceit," "The Tin Drum") Sandra Nettelbeck (German director, "Mostly Martha") Siddiq Barmak (Afghan director, "Osama") Cheick Oumar Sissoko (Malian filmmaker, "Guimba") Gillo Pontecorvo (Italian filmmaker, "Battle of Algiers") Sylvain Chomet (French filmmaker, "The Triplets of Belleville") Fabian Bielinsky (Argentine filmmaker, "Nine Queens") Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Mexican director, "Amores Perros") Niki Caro (New Zealand filmmaker, "The Whale Rider") Takeshi Kitano (Japanese director) Majid Majidi (Iranian director, "The Color of Paradise," "Children of Heaven") Elia Suleiman (Israeli-Palestinian filmmaker, "Divine Intervention") Bahman Ghobadi (Iranian director, "Marooned in Iraq") Babak Payami (Iranian director, "Secret Ballot") Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Iranian director, "Kandahar," "The Cyclist") Jafar Panahi (Iranian director, "Crimson Gold," "The Circle") Abbas Kiarostami (Iranian director, "Ten," "A Taste of Cherry") Ken Loach (British filmmaker) Armando Iannucci (British writer-director “In the Loop,” “The Thick of It”) Paul Greengrass (British director, “Bourne,” “Bloody Sunday”) James Nesbitt (Irish actor) Costa Gavras (Greek-French filmmaker, "Missing") MUSIC Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Pakistan qawwali singer) Ravi Shankar (Indian sitarist) Ali Akbar Khan (Indian sarodist) Zakir Hussain (tabla player) Ali Farka Toure (Mali) Vieux Farka Toure (Mali) Oumou Sangare (Mali) Boubacar Traore (Mali) Issa Bagayogo (Mali) Habib Koite (Mali) Rokia Traore (Mali) Youssou N'Dour (Senegal) Baaba Maal (Senegal) Marco Senghor (Senegalese-American DJ and restaurateur) Angelique Kidjo (Benin-U.S.) Alpha Blondy (Ivory Coast) Thomas Mapfumo (Zimbabwe) Oliver Mtukudzi (Zimbabwe) Fela Kuti (Nigerian superstar; a feature on the 10th anniversary of his death, for Obit magazine) Khaled (French Algerian) Cheikha Rimitti (Algeria) Rachid Taha (French Algerian) Souad Massi (French Algerian) Tinariwen (Touareg-Mali) Kayhan Kalhor (Iran) Googoosh (Iran) Hassan Hakmoun (Moroccan American) David Harrington (Kronos Quartet violinist) McCoy Tyner (jazz pianist from John Coltrane's quartet) Bela Fleck (banjo player) John Adams (Pulitzer Prize-winning composer) Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) Ray Manzarek (keyboardist of The Doors; interviewed for “Al’ America”) G.E. Smith (guitarist, former “Saturday Night Live” bandleader; interviewed for “Al’ America”) Dick Dale (singer-guitarist, best known for “Miserlou,” which anchored Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”; interviewed for “Al’ America”) Wanda Jackson (rock singer who performed with Elvis Presley in the 1950s and is still going strong) Marcel Khalife (Lebanese oudist, composer) Kazem al-Sahir (Iraqi singer) Ustad Farida Mahwash (Afghan singer) Johsua Nelson (“Kosher Gospel” singer) Chava Alberstein (Israeli singer) Daniel Barenboim (international conductor) Inbar Bakal (Israeli singer; written for GlobalPost) Natacha Atlas (Egyptian-British singer) OTHER ARTICLES OF NOTE Timbuktu, Mali music festival Article from Tehran about Iran's biggest film festival: From Iran, a reported essay on the city of Tehran Feature on touring exhibit of Afghan treasures that were saved from warfare News feature on the “Little Kabul” community of Afghan Americans – published in March of 2001, it was one of the first U.S. articles to profile this Afghan community Article on the United Nations, timed to its 60th anniversary: Analysis of U.N. report that said Darfur violence wasn't genocide Analysis of Rwandan president’s role in his country’s genocide Essay on the importance of Somalia Book review of works on journalist Daniel Pearl Celebrities who advocate social causes Feature on how the U.S. government kept tabs on John Lennon, Pete Seeger, Lenny Bruce and other celebrity activists Story, headlined “The Last Days of Privacy,” on increased tracking of people’s information Article on Hurricane Katrina and complaints that the government's response was racist Analysis on how George Bush’s response to Katrina sank his presidency Profile of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il Profile of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah Story about Iraqi bloggers risking their lives to get their views across How war images from Iraq compare to those from Vietnam Article on U.S. prison, “enemy combatants,” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Article on "Made in Palestine" art exhibit Feature on photo exhibit of Arab women Feature story on “Arab Labor,” Israeli TV series Article on Al Jazeera's new English-language network Story on newspapers' increasing reliance on celebrity coverage and the like Story on U.S. veterans of Iraq War who became homeless An essay that considers the music of John and Alice Coltrane



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