Journalist Graeme Wood calls al-Qaeda the most successful terrorist organization in history but questions why “its top operatives appear to be such bumblers – and why have they failed to pull off a major attack on America in the 25 years since 9/11.”
On Nov. 16, he will discuss the origins and fate of al-Qaeda and tally up the victories and blunders, by both al-Qaeda and the United States, a quarter-century into the War on Terror. His talk, “America and Al-Qaeda: Who Changed Whom?” will be at 5:30 p.m. in Myron Taylor Hall, room G85. The talk, sponsored by the Program on Freedom and Free Societies (F&FS), is free and open to the public. It will also be livestreamed; register for the livestream here.
“Graeme Wood is well known for journalism that tries to explain, not simply caricature, the worldviews and motivations of extreme groups and of controversial political figures,” said Michael Fontaine, professor of classics and director of F&FS. “His work is a model of the intellectual seriousness that F&FS was established to promote.”
Wood is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a lecturer in political science at Yale University. He is the author of “The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State,” which won Canada's Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction and was named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year.
Wood is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he was the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow, and has held fellowships at the U.S. Naval Academy and the University of Pennsylvania. A former Pulitzer Prize juror and National Magazine Award finalist, he first studied on the Cornell campus in 1996 as a Telluride Association scholar.
This talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Government (A&S), the Einaudi Center, and the Southwest Asia and North Africa Program.
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