NEWS RELEASE

11/20/03

Jim Bettinger, director, Knight Fellowships: (650) 723-4937, jimb@stanford.edu
John Sanford, writer, Stanford News Service: (650) 736-2151, jsanford@stanford.edu

Who Killed Daniel Pearl? author to speak Dec. 1 at Stanford

Prominent French author and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy will discuss the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl at 4:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 1, in the Oksenberg Room on the third floor of Encina Hall.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists and the Stanford Institute for International Studies.

Pearl, who graduated from Stanford's Department of Communication in 1985, was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan early last year.

Lévy is the author of the best-selling book Who Killed Daniel Pearl? as well as about 30 other books, including works of philosophy, fiction and biography. He has written several books on the Islamic Middle East, including his first book, Red India. He also wrote (with Gilles Hertzog) and directed (with Alain Ferrari) Bosna!, a documentary film about the war in Bosnia.

Lévy started his career covering the war between Pakistan and France for Combat, the legendary newspaper founded by Albert Camus during the Nazi occupation of France.

In addition, Lévy has held several diplomatic positions with the French government. Most recently, in 2002, he was appointed by French President Jacques Chirac to head a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan in the wake of the 2001 war against the Taliban, which Lévy supported.

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