Nightmares: Covering Political Conflict and Global Catastrophe in the Next Millenium

NIGHTMARES: COVERING POLITICAL CONFLICT AND GLOBAL CATASTROPHE IN THE NEXT MILLENIUM

Mark Danner and Peter Tarnoff

We will closely examine scenarios for political conflict in coming years, working to understand how such conflicts might begin, how they might be managed, and how they might be resolved. Through lectures, readings, and enacting scenarios we will explore the changing character of international relations and global crises, and try to prepare journalists for a broader, more complex sort of story. For example: Pakistan and India reach a nuclear confrontation; the Ebola virus kills millions in Central and begins to spread to the rest of Africa and other continents; nuclear-armed terrorists vow to detonate a weapon in New York if their extreme demands are not met; an ever more powerful China and an economically desperate Russia cement an anti-Western alliance; millions of starving North Koreans march towards South Korea. We will analyze the background of each crisis; anticipate what the responses might be from US and officials from key foreign governments; and study the strategies journalists would follow to cover such stories.

Mark Danner is a Senior Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center and a Visiting Professor at the School of Journalism. Since 1990, Danner has been a writer at The New Yorker, and he is the author of The Massacre at El Mozote and the forthcoming The Saddest Story: America, the Balkans and the Post-Cold War World. He has worked at The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, the New York Times, and his writing has been recognized with, among other honors, a National Magazine Award, two Overseas Press Awards, an Emmy, a duPont, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Peter Tarnoff is a former career diplomat who first served in the US. Foreign Service from 1961 until 1982. He then became Executive Director of the World Affairs Council of Northern California in San Francisco, went on to be President of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and then, from 1993 until 1997, was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He is currently President of the International Advisory Corporation in San Francisco.

Mark Danner

Nightmares: Covering Political Conflict and Global Catastrophe in the Next Millenium

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