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Lawrence Pintak

Lawrence Pintak, PhD is an award-winning American journalist and academic leader who specializes in the Middle East and broader Muslim world. Pintak was founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, served as dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communications at The Aga Khan University in East Africa, helped found Pakistan’s Centre for Excellence in Journalism, and directed the Adham Center for Television Journalism at the American University in Cairo, the Arab world’s leading media training center in the years leading up to the Arab Spring. He has also led media development projects in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, and the Caucasus.

In 2017, Pintak was named a Fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists, the organization’s highest lifetime honor, for “extraordinary service to the profession of journalism” around the world. He has won two Overseas Press Club awards and was twice nominated for international Emmys.

A former CBS News Middle East correspondent, Pintak is the author of seven books at the intersection of media, policy, and America’s troubled relationship with the world’s Muslims. His journalistic career extends from the Carter White House to the Indonesian revolution, the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict to Zimbabwe’s independence war.

Longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather described Pintak as “both a globe-trotting journalist and a distinguished scholar not afraid to challenge assumptions, group-think, and the powerful.” Arab-American commentator Rami Khouri called him, “the foremost chronicler of the interactions between the Arab and Western media worlds.”

Pintak’s 2018 book, America & Islam: Soundbites, Suicide Bombs and the Road to Donald Trump (Bloomsbury) was a finalist for the 2020 Religion News Association annual book award. His eighth book, Lessons from the Mountaintop: Ten Modern Mystics and their Extraordinary Lives, will be released by Sentient Publications in August 2025.

Pintak’s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, ForeignPolicy.com, CNN.com, the Columbia Journalism Review, Axios.com, and a variety of other publications, and he is frequently interviewed by NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC, the CBC, and news organizations around the world.

Pintak holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and has served as a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and the Atlantic Council.

He is currently based in Europe directing a Murrow College initiative to bolster international journalism education. Projects include a partnership with the American University in Armenia under a $2.3 million State Department grant to develop a Center for Excellence in Journalism, which includes a Master’s degree.

Journalism Career

Pintak joined CBS News a Middle East correspondent in the summer of 1980. A month later, he was the only U.S. correspondent in Baghdad when the Iraq-Iraq War broke out. Other major stories he covered included the Israeli bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the birth of Hezbollah, the Libyan occupation of Chad, the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Lebanon and Kuwait, the kidnappings of U.S. citizens in Beirut, and the 1984 TWA hijacking.

In 1985, faced with takeover threats from CNN owner Ted Turner and Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, CBS News announced sweeping cutbacks. More than 125 correspondents, producers, and technical staff in the news division lost their jobs. Pintak was among the casualties when management decided to close the Middle East bureau, arguing that since American forces had left Lebanon, it was no longer necessary to have a correspondent based in the region.

After CBS, Pintak established a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., advising multinational corporations and foreign governments on communication strategies, then in the early 1990s expanded the firm to Indonesia, where he met his wife Indira, an Indonesian advertising executive and member of the extended Javanese royal family. When the Asian economic collapse shook Indonesia in 1997, Pintak covered the resulting Reformasi revolution for ABC Radio, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Times, and NPR’s Marketplace business program.

Academia

Pintak transitioned to academia in 2003 as the Howard R. Marsh Professor of Journalism at the University of Michigan, where he also taught in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He then returned to the Middle East as the director of the Adham Center at AUC, which he expanded into a regional hub that trained thousands of Arab journalists in the years leading up to the Arab Spring uprising.

In 2009, Pintak was recruited to become the founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, named for the famous American journalist who was a WSU alumnus. The unit had been a school within the College of Liberal Arts, but WSU President Elson Floyd, previously president at the University of Missouri, which is known for its journalism school, recognized the strength of the Murrow brand and ordered the transition.

After seven years in the role, Pintak stepped down in 2017 to write America & Islam: Soundbites, Suicide Bombs, and the Road to Donald Trump. “Dean Pintak has elevated Murrow onto the national stage in a way never previously achieved,” said Peter Bhatia, a multi-Pulitzer Prize winner, top editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer and former president of the accrediting body for journalism schools. “The college is now very much a part of the national conversation on journalism education, thanks to him.” Pintak later took a two-year leave to help restructure the journalism program at Aga Khan University in East Africa, then returned to WSU.

Early Career

Pintak began his career as a writer at WBBM Chicago, the CBS all news station while an undergraduate student at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, then covered Capitol Hill, the State Department, and the White House for AP Radio, while completing his BA at American University in Washington, D.C.

After graduation, he went to Africa as a freelance journalist. From his base in Lusaka, Zambia, Pintak covered the Black African guerrilla movements fighting for majority rule in what was then Rhodesia for CBS News Radio, The Washington Star, Newsweek, the Times of London and other international news organizations. He also reported on two rebellions in the Shaba province of what was then Zaire, including the massacre of French and Belgians in the mining town of Kolweizi, and events across southern Africa. He conducted a notable interview with rebel leader Robert Mugabe, who would become president of Zimbabwe after independence. “We are not going to make the same mistake the rest of Black Africa has made,” vowed Mugabe, who then went on to be one of the continent’s most oppressive rulers.

Research

Pintak’s academic research focuses on topics of practical use to the media industry and policymakers. Several of his studies have been published by The New York Times, including the first large-scale survey of Arab journalists.

He and co-author Brian J. Bowe of Western Washington University were honored with the AEJMC’s Senior Scholar Award in 2019 for their study of online Islamophobia in the 2018 U.S. presidential election, which was funded by the Social Science Research Council and published in The New York Times. Pintak also received the Inaugural Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award from the AEJMC’s Religion and Media Interest Group in 2021.

Books

Nonfiction

America & Islam: Soundbites, Suicide Bombs and the Road to Donald Trump (2019)

Islam for Journalists (co-edited with Stephen Franklin, 2014). Transformed into a free course for journalists, offered through the Poynter Institute.

The New Arab Journalist (2010)

Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas (2006)

Seeds of Hate: How America’s Flawed Middle East Policy Ignited the Jihad (2003)

Beirut Outtakes (1988)

Fiction

Target Hollywood (2022)

Video and Podcasts

Murrow Interview

American Faultlines

Personal

Pintak is married with three adult children.

References

1. Eaton, Nick. "WSU names new Murrow College dean,". Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
2. "GSMC welcomes new Dean". Aga Khan University. June 29, 2020.
3. "Center for Excellence in Journalism launched at IBA Karachi,". The News (Karachi).
4. "Kamal Adham Center".
5. "Seib, Shepard, Pintak honored as Fellows of the Society for outstanding service to journalism". Society of Professional Journalists.
6. "America & Islam Reviews". Bloomsbury.
7. "The New Arab Journalist Reviews". I.B. Tauris.
8. "Lawrence Pintak Articles". Muckrack.
9. "International Journalism Lab". Edward R. Murrow College of Communication.
10. "AUA and Washington State University Launch Partnership to Create Center for Excellence in Journalism Funded by U.S. Embassy in Yerevan". American University in Armenia.
11. "CBS Evening News for Monday, Sep 22, 1980". Vanderbilt Television News Archive.
12. "Sweeping Staff Cuts at CBS News". The New York Times.
13. "After 32 years, Suharto resigns No. 2 to serve out Indonesian's term". The Washington Times.
14. "International journalist, author to serve as Marsh Visiting Professor".
15. "Murrow College founding dean to step down after seven years,".
16. "I met Robert Mugabe in the late 1970s. What he told me still haunts me". Vox.com.
17. Pintak, Lawrence (May 25, 2008). "Misreading the Arab Media".
18. "Senior Scholars". AEJMC.
19. "#Islamophobia: Stoking Fear and Prejudice in the 2018 Midterms". Social Science Research Council.
20. Pintak, Lawrence (5 Nov 2019). "The Online Cacophony of Hate Against Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib". The New York Times.
21. "GSMC Dean receives international award". Aga Khan University.