Human Rights at Home A Series of Discussions with Visiting Human Rights Scholars at Harvard ABSAR ALAM HAIDER Fellow, Nieman Foundation for Journalism Covering the “War on Terror” TUESDAY, December 7, 2004 6:30PM Kirkland House, Senior Common Room Absar Alam Haider is one of the top investigative journalists in Pakistan. As Deputy Editor of a prestigious Pakistani English language daily The Nation (Islamabad), his work spans war reporting, terrorism, economics, power politics, foreign policy, and violence in society. As a news assistant and Pakistan-based correspondent for The Boston Globe, the Al-Ahram, (an Egyptian weekly) and the Tokyo Shimbun, he covered the US-led war on terror as it unfolded post -September 11th. While newspaper reporting remains his core discipline, he has anchored and scripted political programs on television, and written scripts and analyses for radio. In addition to writing for The Nation, he contributes to planning the daily newspaper coverage and editing the stories and their display. As a 2003 Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Centre in Hawaii, he completed a paper on “Extremism and Violence in Pakistani society” and visited conflict zones in Vietnam as well as the DMZ (de-militarized zone) marking the border between North and South Korea. During his Nieman year, Alam is exploring the war on terror, international security and political economy, international and US politics, Pakistani-US relations, and links between culture and politics and their impact on societies. Molly Curren Coordinator Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies David Rubenstein Building 112 79 John F. Kennedy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 (617) 496-4950 www.humanrights.harvard.edu