Peter Eisner
National Security Journalism Lecturer, Advanced National Security Reporting & the Medill National Security Reporting Project
Peter Eisner, an award-winning foreign correspondent and author, has served as editor and reporter at The Washington Post, Newsday and The Associated Press. Eisner was correspondent and consulting producer at the PBS programs Newshour Weekend and World Focus and was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2010. Eisner served as deputy foreign editor and Washington, D.C, political editor with the Washington Post from 2003-2007. As Asia editor, he coordinated the Post’s award-winning coverage of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Prior to that he was foreign editor and senior foreign correspondent of Newsday, and received the InterAmerican Press Association Award for distinguished reporting on drug trafficking in Latin America. He was a bureau chief and correspondent for The Associated Press in the United States and Latin America. In 1994, he founded NewsCom, an online international news and photo transmission agency. From 1999 to 2001, Eisner was the managing director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based watchdog organization. There he founded an online publication, publicI.org, which won national investigative reporting awards its first year of existence. He was an early member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
His upcoming book, MACARTHUR’S SPIES, is a non-fiction account of guerrillas and the American underground in Japanese occupied Manila during World War Two. He is also co-author with Philip Brenner of the forthcoming CUBA’S QUEST FOR SOVEREIGNTY: A 500-YEAR HISTORY.
Eisner’s 2013 book, THE POPE’S LAST CRUSADE, reveals the story of the lesser-known Pope Pius XI, who served before World War Two and engaged an American Jesuit journalist to help him oppose Hitler, Mussolini and anti-Semitism. The book was a History Book Club and Catholic Book Club monthly selection. His 2004 book, THE FREEDOM LINE, which won the Christopher Award, is the story of young resistance workers in occupied Europe who rescued downed Allied fighter pilots during World War II. His other books include THE ITALIAN LETTER, with co-author Knut Royce, which traces fraudulent U.S. intelligence prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq; and America’s Prisoner, the memoirs of Manuel Antonio Noriega.
Eisner, who lives in Bethesda, Maryland, is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and holds a holds a B.A. in English with a minor in Spanish language literature from Rutgers University.
Lauren Knapp
Adjunct Lecturer and Medill National Security Reporting Project
Lauren Knapp is a documentary filmmaker and visual journalist. Her stories have been featured on the The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, NPR, PRI’s The World, McClatchy, The Atlantic, and TIME among others. Her first feature documentary Live From UB, follows the trajectory of Mongolia’s contemporary political and social transitions through the lens of its rock musicians. She directed it with the support of a Fulbright Fellowship in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. She’s focused her lens on social issues ranging from capital punishment to lockdown drills to fair chance employment.
Her current project, Passage, documents four women’s experience of transitioning into motherhood with a focus on how access to resources and support affect her experience. When she’s not in the field or edit room, she’s in the classroom. She has taught at Georgetown University, Northwestern University, and George Mason University. Lauren holds a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Grinnell College and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University.
Steve Komarow
Adjunct Professor, Covering Conflicts, Terrorism and National Security
Steven Komarow is vice president and news director for CQ Roll Call. was a news correspondent with extensive background in Washington, Europe, and the Middle East. He has covered major U.S. military operations of the past two decades, including Panama, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Komarow, 53, began his career as a local news reporter in Washington on the AP’s Metro Desk in 1979. He covered then-Mayor Marion Barry and local government issues before moving to Capitol Hill in 1985. He covered the presidential campaigns in 1988 and in 1992.In 1993, Komarow moved to USA Today as a full-time defense correspondent, covering three secretaries of defense and troops in the field. He was the first reporter to cover a cruise missile launch from inside a B-52 bomber. He accompanied the first ground troops into Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti.In 2000, Komarow opened USA Today’s bureau in Berlin, Germany, and wrote news and feature stories from Central and Eastern Europe. After Sept. 11, 2001, he covered the U.S.-led military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.He was embedded with the Army during the invasion of Iraq and went on to cover the capture and trial of Saddam Hussein, reconstruction efforts and the insurgency. He also has reported from across Europe and in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Yemen, Djibouti, Lebanon and the Persian Gulf states.Komarow returned to USA Today’s Washington bureau in 2003, splitting his time between national security coverage in Washington and reporting from Iraq.In 2006, he returned to the AP as deputy international editor, based at AP headquarters in New York.In April, 2008, he was named deputy bureau chief in Washington, helping manage a team of more than 100 news gatherers and support staff. He was then a senior editor at Bloomberg, overseeing the White House and national security, before joining CQ/Roll Call. Komarow lives in McLean, Virginia and holds a B.A. in political science from George Washington University.
Jennifer Koons
Adjunct Lecturer and Director, Medill National Security Reporting Project
Jennifer Koons teaches graduate students specializing in politics and national security and oversees Medill’s Politics and National Security Reporting Project at Northwestern University’s Washington, D.C. bureau.
She is a senior national security and foreign policy editor and a global storyteller with 15+ years experience covering the policies, politics and on the ground stories at the nexus of peace and conflict.
She has reported throughout the Middle East, North, East and West Africa and Central Europe, most recently for a Pulitzer Center series on Niger, Nigeria, and Mali to look at the high costs of global warming, overpopulation, conflict and child marriage in West Africa.
Previously, she wrote and oversaw coverage of global affairs, national security and intelligence issues for the Economist Group’s CQ. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, Huffington Post and Foreign Policy, among other publications.
Previously, she taught at Georgetown University and at Northwestern’s undergraduate campus in Doha, Qatar.
Paul Rosenzweig
Adjunct Professor, Cybersecurity Issues
Paul reaches Cybersecurity Issues in the Medill Washington program. He is the founder of Red Branch Consulting PLLC, a homeland security consulting company, and a Senior Advisor to The Chertoff Group. Mr. Rosenzweig formerly served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute. He also serves as a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University, a Senior Editor of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, and as a Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He is an advisor to and former member of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security and a Contributing Editor of the Lawfare blog. In 2011 he was a Carnegie Fellow in National Security Journalism at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, where he now serves as an Adjunct Lecturer. Mr. Rosenzweig is a cum laude graduate of the University of Chicago Law School. He has an M.S. in Chemical Oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego and a B.A. from Haverford College. Following graduation from law school he served as a law clerk to the Honorable R. Lanier Anderson, III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He is the author of Cyber Warfare: How Conflicts in Cyberspace are Challenging America and Changing the World and of two video lecture series from The Great Courses, Thinking About Cybersecurity: From Cyber Crime to Cyber Warfare andThe Surveillance State: Big Data, Freedom, and You. He is the coauthor (with James Jay Carafano) of Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preserving Freedom and co-editor (with Timothy McNulty and Ellen Shearer) of two books, Whistleblowers, Leaks and the Media: The First Amendment and National Security, and National Security Law in the News: A Guide for Journalists, Scholars, and Policymakers. He is also a member of the Literary Society of Washington.
Storer H. (Bob) Rowley
Co-director, Medill National Security Journalism Initiative
Adjunct Lecturer and Assistant Vice President of Media Relations at Northwestern University
Rowley manages all of Northwestern’s daily media relations activities, supervises the media relations staff in the Department of University Relations and directs Northwestern’s internal communications, including all news content on Northwestern’s home page and NewsCenter web page. Rowley is also co-director of Medill’s Politics and National Security Journalism initiative. He also lectures occasionally on public policy advocacy, communication, education, writing, and foreign affairs at Northwestern and other universities. Before his current post, he was executive director of government and community relations at Elmhurst College from 2009 to 2011, where he taught journalism and world religions.
Earlier, Rowley spent 30 years working for the Chicago Tribune (1979-2009), the last seven of them as national editor. He also served there as a member of the Editorial Board writing about foreign affairs and defense issues, and before that, he was a foreign correspondent for 12 years based in Mexico, Canada and Israel. He also served as the Tribune’s White House and Pentagon correspondents in Washington, D.C. He covered a dozen wars as well as natural disasters, human rights, politics, economics, culture, religion and the human condition in more than 50 countries. He is an award-winning journalist and experienced writer, editor, reporter and national-foreign correspondent in newspapers as well as radio and wire services.
He has a Master of Science in Communication degree from Northwestern and earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University.
Ellen Shearer
Co-director, Medill National Security Journalism Initiative
shearer@northwestern.edu
In addition to her duties as co-director of the National Security Journalism Initiative, Ellen is the William F. Thomas Professor of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University and directs the school’s Washington Program. As part of her Initiative work, she, Initiative Co-Director Tim McNulty and Adjunct Lecturer Paul Rosenzweig, developed and edited two books for American Bar Association Publishing, National Security Law “Whistleblowers, Leaks and the Media” and “National Security Law in the News: A Guide for Journalists, Scholars and Policymakers.” She also wrote a curriculum guide for journalism schools, “The James W. Foley Journalists’ Safety Guide;” more than 125 educators around the world have requested copies.
She led the Washington program’s 2004 and 2006 investigative projects, which created databases of privately sponsored congressional travel as part of the student reporters’ investigative series of stories. In 2008-09, she and the Washington students followed up with the Pentagon Travel series, in cooperation with the Center for Public Integrity.
Ellen was a leader in the News21 project on privacy and civil liberties post-9/11, which won a special citation from National Press Foundation and caused the Department of Education to shut down a program that had been sharing student loan data with the Department of Justice. She created and directed “Y Vote 2000: Politics of a New Generation,” a yearlong project to cover the presidential campaign to engage young adults.
She is the co-author of “Nonvoters: America’s No-Shows” and has written chapters in five media books. Before joining the Medill faculty, she was a senior editor at New York Newsday, a consulting editor at Newhouse News Service, marketing executive at Reuters, and held positions as senior executive, bureau chief and reporter during a 10-year stint at United Press International.