The Darien Times

Journalist Robin Wright closes out DCA’s Arab lecture series

Written by The Darien Times
Monday, January 30, 2012 07:00 AM

Fresh from covering the recent Egyptian elections, journalist Robin Wright will be the featured evening speaker of this year's After the Arab Spring lecture series sponsored by the Darien Community Association. Wright, currently a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and foreign policy analyst, will give the fifth and final lecture, The Future of the Middle East.

The presentation will begin at 8 on Thursday, Feb. 2, preceded by a wine and cheese reception at 7:30, hosted by the DCA Academic Lecture Series on Global Issues Committee.

Wright has reported from 140 countries for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Atlantic, The Sunday Times of London, The Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Affairs, CBS News and others. Until 2008 she covered U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Post when she became a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace.

Wright has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yale, Duke and Stanford. The author of six books on foreign affairs, she has also appeared on "Meet the Press," "This Week," "Face the Nation," "PBS Newshour," "Charlie Rose," "Frontline," CNN, "Washington Week," "The Colbert Report," "Hardball" and all the major news networks.

Among many awards, Wright received the U.N. Correspondents Gold Medal, the National Magazine Award for reportage from Iran in The New Yorker, and the Overseas Press Club Award for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative" for her coverage of African wars. She also won the National Press Club Award for diplomatic reporting and has been a recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant.

Current projects include articles about the Islamic parties that are winning elections across the region and a collection of interviews with experts on the lessons forged from the Arab Spring. Wright is exploring the youth and the "drive to be part of the 21st Century — not the seventh or 20th — that now consumes the Arab world."

In her talk at the DCA, Wright plans to discuss U.S. preparation to deal with the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the "wild ride ahead."

Her most recent book, "Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World," focuses on the new order and reforms shaped by youth inspired revolts and political transformations. Copies will be available for sale.

Wright earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Michigan, where she first broke the female gender barrier as the university's first female sports editor in the 60s and as the first female reporter allowed to cover the Rose Bowl. Since then she has witnessed and covered a dozen wars and several revolutions.

All who attend Wright's tlecture on Thursday, Feb. 2, are invited to the reception at 7:30 preceding the program. A limited number of single tickets ($25) will be available at the door.

More info: 203-655-9050, Dariendca.org, 274 Middlesex Road