Mohamad Bazzi, The Nation

Mohamad Bazzi is currently an assistant professor of journalism at New York University, where he teaches international reporting. He was the 2007-08 Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a regular contributor to The Nation. From 2003 to 2007, Bazzi was the Middle East bureau chief at Newsday, based in Beirut and responsible for covering the Arab world. He was the lead writer on the Iraq war and its aftermath, setting up Newsday bureaus in Baghdad and Beirut. He has written extensively about regional politics, Sunni-Shiite tensions, and militant Islam, including profiles of extremists operating in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

He also covered the 2000 Palestinian uprising, the 2001 war in Afghanistan, and the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. In nearly 10 years on staff at Newsday, he was a metro reporter in New York City and served as the paper’s United Nations bureau chief. His articles and commentaries on the Middle East have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Salon, Washington Times, Newark Star-Ledger, and The National (Abu Dhabi).

Among Bazzi’s awards are the 2008 American Academy of Religion Award for In-Depth Reporting on Religion; the 2005 Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize; the 2004 News Analysis Award from the NY Society of the Silurians; the 2004 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism; the 2003 Silver Medal from the United Nations Correspondents Association; and the 2002 Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Print Reporting on South Asia.

Dexter Filkins, The New York Times

Dexter Filkins, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, joined the newspaper in 2000. From March 2003 until August 2006, he was a correspondent in the paper’s Baghdad bureau. In 2007 and 2008, Filkins was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, where he was completing a book based on his experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is the author of “The Forever War,’’ published in September by Alfred A. Knopf. In 2001 and 2002, Filkins covered the war in Afghanistan. Filkins’ work in Iraq and Afghanistan has received a number of awards, including a George Polk award for his coverage of the assault on Falluja in November 2004. During the attack on Falluja, Filkins accompanied a company of Marines, a quarter of whom were killed or wounded in eight days.

He has been a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize twice, from Iraq and Afghanistan. Prior to that, he was the New Delhi bureau chief for The Los Angeles Times. During that time, he witnessed the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Filkins has an M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University and a B.A. in government from the University of Florida, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He grew up in Cape Canaveral, Florida.