Mark Danner
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Mark David Danner (born November 10, 1958) is an American writer, journalist, and educator. He is a former staff writer for ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' and frequent contributor to ''
The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
''. Danner specializes in U.S. foreign affairs, war and politics, and has written books and articles on
Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...
, Central America, the former
Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
, and the Middle East, as well as on American politics, covering every presidential election since 2000. In 1999, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. , Danner holds the Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education at
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
and James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College. Danner is a member of the Berkeley Collegium, the
Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, mi ...
, the World Affairs Council of Northern California, and the
Century Association The Century Association is a private social, arts, and dining club in New York City, founded in 1847. Its clubhouse is located at 7 West 43rd Street near Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. It is primarily a club for men and women with distinction ...
, and is a fellow of the Institute of the Humanities at
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...
. In 2008 he was named the Marian and Andrew Heiskell Visiting Critic at the American Academy in Rome, a post he took up again in 2010. Danner has had a longtime association with the Telluride Film Festival, where he introduces films and conducts interviews; in 2013, he was named resident curator there.


Background and education

Danner was born at
Utica, New York Utica () is a Administrative divisions of New York, city in the Mohawk Valley and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The List of cities in New York, tenth-most-populous city in New York State, its population was 65,283 ...
. He attended
Utica Free Academy Utica Free Academy, whose predecessor, Utica Academy, opened in 1814, was a high school in Utica, New York, which operated from 1840 until 1990, when it was consolidated with Thomas R. Proctor High School. The combined entity operated briefly at U ...
, a public high school, and then
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, where he graduated, magna cum laude, with a degree in modern literature and aesthetics in 1981. At Harvard, he studied with
Stanley Cavell Stanley Louis Cavell (; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, an ...
, Robert Kiely, Stanley Hoffmann, and Frank Kermode, who in 1977-78 was the Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer and became Danner's mentor and friend.


Career


Early years

After leaving Harvard, Danner joined the staff of ''
The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', where he worked as an assistant to editor
Robert B. Silvers Robert Benjamin Silvers (December 31, 1929 – March 20, 2017) was an American editor who served as editor of ''The New York Review of Books'' from 1963 to 2017. Raised on Long Island, New York, Silvers graduated from the University of Chicago ...
from 1981 to 1984. In 1984, he moved to ''
Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
'' as a senior editor. In 1986, he joined ''
The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine Supplement (publishing), supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted man ...
'', where he specialized in foreign affairs and politics, writing pieces about nuclear weapons and about the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti, among other stories.


''The New Yorker'' and El Mozote

In 1990, Danner joined the staff of ''The New Yorker'' shortly after the magazine published his three-part series on Haiti, "A Reporter at Large: Beyond the Mountains". On December 6, 1993, for only the second time in its history, ''The New Yorker'' devoted its entire issue to one article, Danner's piece, "The Truth of El Mozote", an investigation into the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, thought to be one of the worst atrocities in modern Latin American history. The Mozote article became the basis for Danner's first book, ''The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War'', which was published in 1994. ''The New York Times Book Review'' recognized ''The Massacre at El Mozote'' as one of its "Notable Books of the Year."


The Balkans and ''The New York Review of Books''

During the mid-1990s Danner began reporting on the wars in the Balkans, writing a series of eleven extended articles for ''The New York Review of Books'', which began with Danner's cover piece, "The US and the Yugoslav Catastrophe" (November 20, 1997) and concluded with "Kosovo: The Meaning of Victory", (July 15, 1999). His 16,000-word essay, "Marooned in the Cold War: America, the Alliance and the Quest for a Vanished World," which appeared in World Policy Journal (Fall 1997) provoked a prolonged exchange of letters and responses from Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, Deputy Secretary of State
Strobe Talbott Nelson Strobridge Talbott III (born April 25, 1946) is an American foreign policy analyst focused on Russia. He was associated with ''Time'' magazine, and a diplomat who served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001. He was president ...
, Congressman
Lee H. Hamilton Lee Herbert Hamilton (born April 20, 1931) is an American politician and lawyer from Indiana. He is a former member of the United States House of Representatives and a former member of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council. A member of the ...
, and Ambassador
George F. Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histo ...
.


Iraq and the War on Terror

Danner began writing about the war on terror soon after September 11, 2001, publishing "The Battlefield in the American Mind" in ''The New York Times'' in October of that year. He began speaking out against invading Iraq, notably in a series of debates with Christopher Hitchens,
Leon Wieseltier Leon Wieseltier (; born June 14, 1952) is an American critic and magazine editor. From 1983 to 2014, he was the literary editor of ''The New Republic''. He was a contributing editor and critic at ''The Atlantic'' until October 27, 2017, when the ...
, Michael Ignatieff, David Frum, William Kristol and others. He reported from Iraq for ''The New York Review of Books'' in a series of lengthy dispatches including "Iraq: How Not to Win a War" (September 25, 2003), "Delusions in Baghdad" (February 12, 2004), and "The War of the Imagination" (December 21, 2006). In May 2005 Danner wrote an essay for The New York Review accompanying the first American publication of the so-called "Downing Street Memo", the leaked minutes of a July 2002 meeting of high-level British officials that confirmed that when it came to the debate over whether to go to war in Iraq, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," and that the invasion of Iraq was in fact a foregone conclusion. The essay provoked a number of responses and led to two subsequent essays, all of which were collected, along with relevant documents and a preface by ''The New York Times'' columnist Frank Rich, in 2006 in ''The Secret Way to War: the Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War's Buried History''. In October 2016, Brian Lamb sat down with Mark Danner to talk about his latest book, ''Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War'', which looks at the 15-year U.S. war on terrorism. The interviewed aired on C-SPAN on Oct. 27, 2016.


Torture and Abu Ghraib

Beginning in the spring of 2004, he wrote a series of essays for ''The New York Review of Books'' on the emerging torture scandal that came to be known as
Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib (; ar, أبو غريب, ''Abū Ghurayb'') is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road t ...
. In October 2004, he collected these essays and gathered them, together with a series of government documents and reports, into his book, ''Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror''. In March 2009, Danner published an essay in ''The New York Review'', "US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites", which revealed the contents of a secret
International Committee of the Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
report based on testimony from "high-value detainees" in the "War on Terror," who had been captured, held, and interrogated at secret US prisons—the so-called "black sites". Shortly thereafter, he published a second essay, "The Red Cross Report: What it Means" and released the full text of the report on ''The New York Review'' website. Weeks later, President Obama ordered released four Justice Department memos in which the Bush administration purported "to legalize torture." Senior Obama officials Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod claimed publicly that the memos' release was prompted by publication of the Red Cross Report.


Mark Danner On Donald Trump

In the spring of 2016, Danner began covering the 2016 general election for ''The New York Review of Books'', profiling then Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump on his campaign trail. In May, ''The New York Review of Books'' published "The Magic of Donald Trump," and on Dec. 22, the magazine published "The Real Trump." Following the articles, Danner has appeared as a guest on multiple radio shows, including WNUR 89.3FM Chicago's "This is Hell!" and KALW 91.5FM San Francisco's "Your Call", to discuss Trump's presidency. He also has sat down with Bard President Leon Botstein twice to discuss President Donald Trump's first days in office and his approach to foreign and domestic policy. In March 2017, ''The New York Review of Books'' published Danner's "What Could He Do?," which chronicles Trump's first days in office. Mark continued his coverage Donald Trump in the 2020 election. In October 2020, The New York Review of Books published Danner's "The Con He Rode In On," outlining the fallacies and damage of the Trump Presidency and campaign. After the 2020 election, Danner attended the Trump rally at the White House ellipse on January 6, marching to the U.S. Capitol, and reported on it in his piece "Be Ready to Fight". "The Slow-Motion Coup," the first in a series of essays on January 6 and Donald Trump, appeared in the New York Review of Books.


Other works


Books

In addition to ''The Massacre at El Mozote'' (1994), ''Torture and Truth'' (2004), and ''The Secret Way to War'' (2006), Danner is the author of ''The Road to Illegitimacy: One Reporter's Travels through the 2000 Florida Recount'' (2003) and ''Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War'' (2009). His most recent book is ''Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War,'' published in June 2016.


Television and commentary

Danner co-wrote and helped produce two-hour-long television documentaries for
ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...
News' Peter Jennings Reporting series: "While America Watched: The Bosnian Tragedy" and "House on Fire: America's Haitian Crisis", which both aired in 1994. As commentator, Danner has appeared on '' The Charlie Rose Show'', '' The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour'' and '' Bill Moyers Journal'' on
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
,
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
's Prime News, The Situation Room, and ''
Anderson Cooper 360 Anderson or Andersson may refer to: Companies * Anderson (Carriage), a company that manufactured automobiles from 1907 to 1910 * Anderson Electric, an early 20th-century electric car * Anderson Greenwood, an industrial manufacturer * Anderson R ...
'', ABC's ''
World News Now ''World News Now'' (or WNN) is an American overnight news broadcast seen on ABC. Airing during the early morning hours each Monday through Friday, the program features a mix of general news and off-beat stories, along with weather forecasts, sp ...
'', C-Span's ''Morning Show,'' and '' The Rachel Maddow Show'' on MSNBC, among others.


Academic career

Since 2000, Danner has been a Professor of Journalism at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
. In 2002 he also accepted a
Henry R. Luce Henry Robinson Luce (April 3, 1898 – February 28, 1967) was an American magazine magnate who founded ''Time (magazine), Time'', ''Life (magazine), Life'', ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'', and ''Sports Illustrated'' magazine. He has been called ...
professorship in Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College, where, in 2006, he was named the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities. As of 2021, he holds the Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education at UC Berkeley. He teaches on foreign affairs, politics, and literature, including seminars on foreign reporting
war and revolution
crisis management
Trump AbroadFaulknerHemingwayChekhov
an
Tolstoy
At Bard he conducts seminars on politics and literature, including on torture, utopia, Faust, the picaresque, drone warfare, and the politics of the War on Terror. In April 2010, Danner delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at
Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...
, entitled "Torture and the Forever War: Living in the State of Exception." From 2011 to 2012, Danner taught politics and literature, including courses on the Arab Spring, on the politics of dictatorships and on drone warfare, at Al Quds University in Jerusalem.


Honors and awards (selected)


Winner

* 1999 MacArthur Fellow. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. * 1990 National Magazine Award for Reporting. "A Reporter at Large: Beyond the Mountains," The New Yorker * 1993
Overseas Press Award The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain a ...
. The Madeline Dane Ross Award for Best International Reporting for "The Truth of El Mozote," * 1994 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Special Media Award for "The Truth of El Mozote," * 1994 Emmy Award for "While America Watched: The Bosnia Tragedy," ABC News Peter Jennings Reporting * 1995 DuPont Gold Baton for "While America Watched: The Bosnia Tragedy," Peter Jennings Reporting. * 1998
Overseas Press Award The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain a ...
. The Ed Cunningham Award for "Yugoslav Wars,” The New York Review of Books. * 2004
Overseas Press Award The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain a ...
. The Madeline Dane Ross Award for For Torture and Truth * 2006 Carey McWilliams Award, American Political Science Association. * 2006 Best American Political Writing, For “Taking Stock of the Forever War.” * 2007 The Best American Essays, For “Iraq: The War of the Imagination." * 2016 – 17 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, April 2016. * 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, April 2019


Finalist

* 2014 Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage.


Personal life

In 2011, while teaching at Al Quds University in Palestine, Danner met Michelle Sipe of Gainesville, Florida, a Victorian Literature professor. They married in 2014 and have two children, Grace Beth Danner and Truman Leo Danner. The family divide their time between their house in the Berkeley hills of California and the Hudson Valley of New York State.


Published works

; Books * * * * * * ;Reporting and Essays (selected) * * * *
"Bosnia: The Turning Point"
''The New York Review of Books.'' February 5, 1998.
"Bosnia: The Great Betrayal"
''The New York Review of Books.'' March 26, 1998. * * *
"Iraq: The New War"
''The New York Review of Books.'' September 25, 2003. * * * * * * *
"After September 11: Our State of Exception"
''The New York Review of Books.'' October 13, 2011.
"Rumsfeld's War and Its Consequences Now"
''The New York Review of Books.'' December 19, 2013.
"Donald Rumsfeld Revealed"
''The New York Review of Books.'' January 9, 2014.
"Rumsfeld: Why We Live in His Ruins"
''The New York Review of Books.'' February 6, 2014.
"The Darkness of Dick Cheney"
''The New York Review of Books.'' March 6, 2014.
"He Remade Our World"
''The New York Review of Books.'' April 3, 2014. *
"How Robert Gates Got Away With It"
''The New York Review of Books.'' August 24, 2014.
"State of Siege: Their Torture, and Ours"
''The Criterion Collection.'' May 27, 2015. *
"The Magic of Donald Trump"
''The New York Review of Books.'' May 26, 2016.
"On the Election– II"
''The New York Review of Books.'' November 10, 2016.
"The Real Trump"
''The New York Review of Books.'' December 22, 2016.
"What He Could Do"
''The New York Review of Books.'' March 23, 2017.
"Moving Backward: Hypocrisy and Human Rights"
''The New York Review of Books.'' June 1, 2020.
"The Con He Rode In On"
''The New York Review of Books.'' October 21, 2020.
"'Be Ready to Fight'"
''The New York Review of Books.'' January 14, 2021
"Reality Rebellion"
''The New York Review of Books.'' July 1, 2021.
"We're in an Emergency - Act Like It!"
''The New York Review of Books.'' August 18, 2022.
"The Slow-Motion Coup (Part 1)"
''The New York Review of Books.'' September 14, 2022. ;Lectures and Interviews (selected)
"Conversations with History: Being A Writer"
Mark Danner interviews Harry Kreisler. March 2, 1999.
"Torture and Truth: War on Terror"
(Lecture: video). ''C-SPAN.'' January 13, 2005. *
"The Secret Way to War"
(Lecture: video). ''C-SPAN.'' July 11, 2006. * * *
"Secret Report on CIA Jails"
(Interview: video). Interview with Greta Brawner. ''C-SPAN.'' March 17, 2009. * * *
"Stripping the Body Bare"
(Interview: video). Interview with Nancy Jarvis. ''C-SPAN.'' November 12, 2009.
Kronos Quartet Symposium: Centennial Anniversary of WWI.
Mark Danner speaks on the impact of WWI. April 4, 2014. *
The Management of Savagery: The Islamic State, Extreme Violence and Our Endless War
' Presented by The Human Rights Project. Tuesday, December 1, 2015 *
Rethinking Washington's Counterterrorism Strategy
' Virtual roundtable with Peter Leyden, Rachel Kleinfeld, Stephen Walt and Suzanna Nossel. Part of the ReInvent media series, December 8, 2015
"The Forever War"
(Interview: video). Interview with Nancy Jarvis. ''The World Affairs Council.'' July 29, 2016.
"Trapped in the Forever War"
(Interview). Interview with Rose Aguilar. ''KALW.'' August 5, 2016.
"Q&A with Mark Danner"
(Interview: video). Interview with Brian Lamb. ''C-SPAN.'' October 27, 2016.
Townsend Center Berkeley Book Chat: Mark Danner with Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates and Mark Danner speak about his Book ''Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War.'' February 28, 2018.
Mark Danner in Conversation with Robert Hass at UC Berkeley
Robert Hass and Mark Danner discuss Mark's career. April 12, 2018.
"The Death of Human Rights: Drones, Torture and the New Nationalism," The Robert B. Silvers Lecture, New York Public Library
December 3, 2019.
"Writing Crises: The Broken Self and the Broken World"
Mark Danner and Sarah Manguso in conversation for Tuesday Talks, an online series curated by the American Society in Rome, April 20, 2022. ;Anthologies and Introductions * * * * * * * * * * * * *


References


External links


Official site
Mark Danner on vimeoMark Danner on youtube
-> * http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/book-review-podcast-guantnamo-diary/?ref=arts&_r=0 * * *. VICE News {{DEFAULTSORT:Danner, Mark American newspaper reporters and correspondents American war correspondents American investigative journalists American foreign policy writers American male non-fiction writers The New Yorker staff writers University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism faculty Bard College faculty Harvard College alumni MacArthur Fellows Writers from Utica, New York 1958 births Living people Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area Journalists from New York (state) Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs