Shuja Nawaz was honored with the Columbia Journalism school’s 2023 alumni award. He is the founding director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center in Washington, D.C. He now serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the Center.
Mr. Nawaz has worked with leading think tanks on projects dealing with Pakistan and the Middle East. He has also advised or briefed senior government and military officials and parliamentarians in the US, Europe, and Pakistan.
Mr. Nawaz was a newscaster and news and current affairs producer for Pakistan Television from 1967 to 1972 and covered the western front of the 1971 war between Pakistan and India. He has worked for The New York Times, the World Health Organization, and has headed three separate divisions at the International Monetary Fund. He was also a director at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna 1999-2001, while on leave from the IMF.
He is the author of a new book The Battle for Pakistan: The Bitter US Friendship and a Tough Neighbourhood (Penguin Random House, and Liberty Books, Pakistan 2019 and Rowman & Littlefield 2020), and Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford University Press 2008 and 2018).
I am delighted to be honored by my fellow alumni of the Columbia J School and to be in such august company. At heart, I remain a journalist. Asking questions and questioning authority. All for the public good. That’s what Columbia taught me.
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