Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism - Faculty

Mark Danner

PROFESSOR

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Phone: (510) 643-7045

More info: markdanner.com

Mark Danner is a writer and reporter who for twenty-five years has written on politics and foreign affairs, focusing on war and conflict. He has covered, among many other stories, wars and political conflict in Central America, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the Middle East, and, most recently, the story of torture during the War on Terror. Danner is Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs, Politics and the Humanities at Bard College. Among his books are The Secret Way to War, Torture and Truth , The Road to Illegitimacy , and The Massacre at El Mozote. Danner was a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, Aperture, and many other newspapers and magazines. He co-wrote and helped produce two hour-long documentaries for the ABC News program Peter Jennings Reporting , and his work has received, among other honors, a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, and an Emmy. In 1999 Danner was named a MacArthur Fellow. He speaks and lectures widely on foreign policy and America's role in the world.

Stories by Mark Danner

The Paradoxes of the Torture Scandal
Here's a question: When was the last time American officials waterboarded a detainee? Well, that would be 2003 -- six years ago. Here's another: When did Americans first find out about it? That would be 2004 -- five years ago. Professor Mark Danner writes about the torture scandal in an article for the Washington Post.
Posted April 27, 2009

The ICRC Torture Report: What It Means
For the New York Review of Books
Posted April 8, 2009

US Torture: Tales from the Black Sites
An exclusive report by Mark Danner, for The New York Review of Books, on the ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High-Value" Detainees in CIA Custody.
Posted March 15, 2009

Tales from Torture's Dark World
For The New York Times Sunday Week in Review, an exclusive report by Mark Danner on the ICRC report on The Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody.
Posted March 15, 2009

Frozen Scandal
Scandal is our growth industry. Revelation of wrongdoing leads not to definitive investigation, punishment, and expiation but to more scandal. Permanent scandal. Frozen scandal... Professor Mark Danner writes in The New York Review of Books
Posted January 7, 2009

Obama & Sweet Potato Pie
You would think first of all of a village fair: the entire community of Germantown, Northwest Philly, taking itself up on the brightest of bright sunny fall days and moving en masse, clumps of people—groups of young men in the obligatory hoodies and low-riding jeans, moms pushing strollers, dads lugging car seats... Professor Mark Danner writes in The New York Review of Books.
Posted January 7, 2009

2008: The Weight of the Past
Mark Danner's contribution to the New York Review of Book's a symposium on the upcoming election entitled "What's at Stake." (October 6, 2008)
Posted January 7, 2009

Weapons of Mass Destruction and Other Imaginative Acts
For the New York Times, Mark Danner reviews Ron Suskind's "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism"
Posted January 7, 2009

Taking Stock of the Terror War
To contemplate a prewar map of Baghdad — as I do the one before me, with sectarian neighborhoods traced out in blue and red and yellow — is to look back on a lost Baghdad, a Baghdad of our dreams...(Based on a lecture delivered by Mark Danner at the Tenth Asia Security Conference, New Delhi. March 2008)
Posted January 7, 2009

'The Moment Has Come to Get Rid of Saddam'
For the The New York Review of Books, an introductory essay and commentary on the latest crucial document attesting to "the gap between what President Bush and members of his administration were saying publicly during the run-up to the [Iraq] war and what they were saying, and doing, in more private settings": the Crawford Transcript of Bush's conversation with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, February 22, 2003.
Posted November 21, 2007

War, Fear, and Truth
For the Los Angeles Times, an op-ed essay about George Orwell for our times, adapted from a piece of the same title published in the volume "What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics" (Public Affairs, November 2007), edited by Andres Szanto and with an introduction by Orville Schell.
Posted November 21, 2007

Words in a Time of War (abridged)
For the Los Angeles Times, an op-ed essay by professor Mark Danner, adapted from remarks delivered at the commencement ceremony for the UC-Berkeley Department of Rhetoric, May 15, 2007.
Posted November 21, 2007

Words in a Time of War
"Taking the measure of the first Rhetoric-major president": A commencement address by Mark Danner delivered to graduates in the Department of Rhetoric, Zellerbach Hall, the University of California, Berkeley. The address is available online at tomdispatch.com.
Posted May 31, 2007

Iraq: The War of the Imagination
In a major 13,000 word piece for For The New York Review of Books, Professor Mark Danner dissects the Bush administration's prosecution of the Iraq War as we enter "the time of solutions".
Posted March 1, 2007

You Can Do Anything With a Bayonet Except Sit on It
At tomdispatch.com, Professor Mark Danner was interviewed by Tom Engelhardt. The two had a conversation about Iraq, torture, and Bush's state of exception.
Posted February 27, 2006

Taking Stock of the Forever War
In a cover-story for the The New York Times Magazine, published on the four-year anniversary of 9/11, Professor Mark Danner assesses the history and future of the War on Terror.
Posted September 15, 2005

Iraq's Buried History: The Memo, the Press, and the War
In an exchange with Michael Kinsley of the Los Angeles Times for The New York Review of Books, Mark Danner takes up the press reception of the Downing Street Memo and other documents that tell the secret story of how the Iraq war began.
Posted July 28, 2005

What Are You Going To Do With That?
The New York Review of Books presents a commencement address by Mark Danner, given to graduating students in the English Department at UC-Berkeley, Hearst Greek Theater, May 15, 2005.
Posted June 7, 2005

The Secret Way to War
For the For The New York Review of Books, Mark Danner introduces the Downing Street Memo and explains the Bush Administration's willful manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War. The text accompanies the first U.S.-print publication of the notorious memo.
Posted June 7, 2005

Iraq: The Real Election
For The New York Review of Books, Professor Mark Danner reports from Baghdad on the recent Iraq election and the state of Iraqi politics two years into the year (the first of a two-part story).
Posted May 11, 2005

Bush's Victory: Second Thoughts
An extended exchange prompted by Mark Danner's essay "How Bush Really Won" in the The New York Review of Books, January 13, 2005. Letters by Andrew Hacker and Paul Cohen, response by Mark Danner.
Posted March 2, 2005

We Are All Torturers Now
On the New York Times Op-Ed page, Professor Mark Danner lays out the case against President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, describing his role in legitimizing torture as U.S. policy in the "War on Terror".
Posted January 10, 2005

How Bush Really Won
For New York Review of Books, Professor Mark Danner provides his take on the historic presidential election of 2004, through the lens of his travels in Florida over the final days of the campaign.
Posted January 5, 2005

A Doctrine Left Behind
For the New York Times, Professor Mark Danner writes about Colin Powell, Iraq and the "Post-Factual Age."
Posted November 24, 2004

Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story
For The New York Review of Books, Professor Mark Danner writes about how deep the Abu Ghraib prison scandal really goes.
Posted October 7, 2004

Struggles of Democracy
For The New York Times, Professor Mark Danner writes "The Struggles of Democracy and Empire."
Posted October 9, 2002

Articles About Mark Danner

Into the Inferno, with Notebook
Harvard Magazine: "Writer Mark Danner is at his best when the world is doing its worst."

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