Juan Pablo Pérez-Burgos (’24) named FASPE Journalism Fellow

Juan Pablo Pérez-Burgos (’24)

Juan Pablo Pérez-Burgos (’24) has been named a 2023 Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) Journalism Fellow.

Pérez-Buros covered transitional justice, conflict, environment, and politics in Colombia before moving to the United States to study narrative writing at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Each year, FASPE awards fellowships to more than a dozen journalism students and early-career journalists. Fellows spend two weeks in Berlin and Poland, where they visit key sites of Nazi history and participate in daily faculty-led seminars. They examine how German and foreign journalists were complicit in Nazi policies through inadequate coverage or misrepresentation of the crimes being committed, as well as the impact of technology on journalism, the role of journalists in electoral politics and in holding power accountable, normalizing aberrant behavior through media coverage, and the challenge of reporting in an era in which fake news and accusations of fake news are increasingly common.

“By visiting the places where the Nazis committed so many crimes, I’m hoping to understand journalism’s role in this horror,” Pérez-Burgos said. “FASPE will give me the tools to better write about my own country’s transition to peace and the war crimes that are currently being judged.”

Berkeley Journalism has a decade-long history of students and alumni being part of the program since it launched in 2011. Berkeley Journalism Dean Geeta Anand says there’s even more at stake today. “Countering disinformation, reporting on the rise of attacks on vulnerable populations and building trust in journalism are values uniting FASPE and the J-School. This will be an important life experience for Juan. We couldn’t be more proud.”

Past fellows include Betty Marquez Rosales (’21), Erin Stone (’19), E. T. Sonner Kehrt (’18), Kate Harloe (’17), Peter Bittner (‘17), Matt Beagle (’16), Dayton Martindale (’16), S. Parker Yesko (’15) and Byron Wilkes (’13).

The program will run June 23 to July 7, 2023.