Reporting in Middle East Conflict Zones: Journalist Orly Halpern on Ethical Dilemmas and Identity Issues

Orly Halpern is a Jewish American Israeli war correspondent. She is also an Arabic speaker who lived in Baghdad and reported for a year during the Iraq war and covered the second Intifada driving her sedan across the West Bank.

When she left Iraq she became the Middle East correspondent of The Jerusalem Post for which she traveled across the Arab and Muslim world learning about the politics, the people, and their views on Jews and Israel. She developed a particular interest in Jewish communities living amongst the Arabs. (She has spent Passover with the last Afghan Jew in Kabul and with Bahraini Jews in Manama, and US soldiers in Baghdad.)

Today Ms. Halpern is a freelance journalist and a reporter for Toronto's Globe and Mail. She has contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines, including US News and World Report, Dallas Morning News, Jewish Daily Forward, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, Haaretz, McClatchy Newspapers, Hadassah magazine, and Homemakers (Canada). During the Second Lebanon War she reported for US News and was an analyst on Fox News. In 2007 she traveled to Rwanda to write about the empowerment of women since the genocide.

Light lunch will be served.