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IN PRINT: Philip Gourevitch and Jacob Weisberg: Challenges for the Next Administration

Philip Gourevitch, author of Standard Operating Procedure, and Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of Slate.com and author of The Bush Tragedy, joined moderator James F. Hoge for a conversation on the civil liberties legacy of the Bush administration, at the NYU Center for Global Affairs in November 2008. They discussed the relationships that formed Bush’s presidency; how Obama’s administration might address the legacies of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and whether resolving these might improve U.S. foreign relations.

Hoge is editor and Peter G. Peterson chair of Foreign Affairs, and hosts each semester CGA’s ongoing In Print series of book talks with leading authors.

Philip Gourevitch is the Editor of The Paris Review, and a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of Standard Operating Procedure (2008), A Cold Case (2001) and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: stories from Rwanda (1998), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and in England, the Guardian First Book Award. His books have been translated in ten languages, and his short stories have appeared in a number of journals. Before relaunching The Paris Review in 2005, Gourevitch traveled extensively for a decade, writing from Africa, Asia, and Europe. In 2004, he was The New Yorker’s Washington Correspondent, covering the presidential election.

James F. Hoge is editor and Peter G. Peterson Chair of Foreign Affairs, a bi-monthly magazine of analysis and commentary on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. During his 16 years as editor, Foreign Affairs has more than doubled its circulation to an all-time high of 160,000 and has also launched editions in Spanish, Japanese and Russian. Prior to joining Foreign Affairs, Mr. Hoge spent three decades in newspaper journalism as a Washington correspondent, then editor and publisher of The Chicago Sun-Times and finally as publisher of The New York Daily News. Under his direction, the Sun-Times won six Pulitzer Prizes and the Daily News one. He is the Chairman of the International Center for Journalists, serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, and is an active member of the CGA advisory board.

Jacob Weisberg, is the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of The Slate Group, which publishes Slate and other web sites. The Slate Group is a new division of The Washington Post Company tasked with developing a family of Internet-based publications through start-ups and acquisitions. A native of Chicago, Weisberg attended Yale University and New College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. From 1989 until 1994, he worked as a writer and editor at The New Republic. Between 1994 and 1996, he covered politics for New York Magazine. In 1996, he joined the new Internet magazine Slate, where he covered the 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns as Chief Political Correspondent. Weisberg served as Editor of Slate from 2002 until 2008. He has also been a Contributing Writer for The New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and a reporter for Newsweek in London and Washington, as well as a weekly editorial-page columnist for the Financial Times. Since 2006, he has served on the Board of the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). Weisberg is the author of several books, including The Bush Tragedy, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2008. With former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, he co-wrote In an Uncertain World, which was published in 2003. His first book, In Defense of Government, was published in 1996.