Pulitzer Center

TORTURE AND TORMENT IN SYRIA In an important and deeply disturbing report for The New Yorker, Pulitzer Center grantee Ben Taub tells the story of a secretive organization called the Commission for International Justice and Accountability that has spent the last four years painstakingly documenting war crimes and other atrocities perpetrated by the Syrian government.   Ben is a stellar young journalist who produced his first piece forThe New Yorker the same day he graduated from Columbia Journalism School last year. As a new round of peace talks gets underway in Geneva this week, his story gives voice to some of the torture victims, and stands as a powerful indictment of the international community’s wholly inadequate response to the crisis in Syria. KENYA’S WAR ON AL SHABAAB Kenya is supposed to be one of the bulwarks of stability in Africa and a key U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic radicalism in the region, but as Pulitzer Center grantees Nick Schifrin and Zach Fannin report in their three-part series for the PBS NewsHour, Kenya’s war on the Somalia-based terror group Al Shabaab may be creating a new enemy. A heavy-handed security crackdown in northeastern Kenya, home to many ethnic Somalis, has created mistrust and hostility. Rampant corruption along with a chronic lack of infrastructure and opportunity has made these borderlands a fertile recruiting ground for Al Shabaab extremists. “Until Kenya stops breeding its own enemies, the country will remain divided and Al Shabaab will continue to exploit these differences to wage war,” says Nick.   If you are a teacher, and you would like to use the NewsHour's reporting in your classroom, click here for a lesson designed by our education team. Or you can use the Lesson Builder to design your own, drawing from our growing archive of reporting from Africa. It's easy to use—and it's free. PANAMA PAPERS, CONTINUED Last week, we highlighted the work of Pulitzer Center grantee Carrie Ching, who created a video animation for theInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ ground-breaking probe into a shadowy Panamanian law firm that enabled politicians, business leaders, celebrities and others to hide billions in assets from tax authorities. The investigation, triggered by the leak of some 11.5 million documents, has already resulted in the resignation of one head of state. As it continues to gather momentum and media attention, another one of our grantees, Uri Blau, gives Nieman Reports an insider’s peek on how this massively complex investigative project took shape. CELEBRATING OUR TENTH: VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS Last week we marked our first decade with the announcement of a $12 million endowment challenge grant from Emily Rauh Pulitzer and a $1 million contribution toward that challenge from Katherine Moore. A dinner in New York featured talks by Judy Woodruff of PBS NewsHour, Kathy Im of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and our journalist grantee Jason Motlagh. A short highlights video captures a memorable night. On the following night we did a joint presentation with thePulitzer Prizes Centennial that featured talks by Pulitzer Prizes Administrator Mike Pride, Jon Sawyer of the Pulitzer Center, and three two-time Pulitzer Prize winners now associated with the Pulitzer Center: Paul Salopek, Larry C. Price, and David Rohde. The talks tell a powerful story of what the Pulitzer Prizes mean—and what it means to live the Pulitzer legacy. Until next week, Tom Hundley Senior Editor

Visit ICIJ to learn everything about The Panama Papers.

Visit ICIJ for all info on The Panama Papers.

To read full reports about The Panama Papers, and stories about specific leaked documents visit ICIJ’s website. (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)

Visit ICIJ to learn everything about The Panama Papers.

HELP FROM AFAR Even as nervous governments shut their doors to Syrian refugees, individuals have responded to the crisis with heroic acts of generosity. In Milwaukee, one such local hero is Dr. Tarif Bakdash, a Syrian-American physician who is leading a team of volunteers that will provide medical treatment to the refugees—especially children—in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp. Pulitzer Center grantees Mark Johnson and Mark Hoffman are chronicling the efforts of Dr. Bakdash and his team for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This will be Bakdash’s second mission to the region. The 51-year-old pediatric neurologist who grew up in Syria and works at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin told Johnson, “I feel 90 percent American. I belong here. But now we have a disaster. I was born there. I grew up there. I have a moral obligation.” MISSING OUT IN IRAN The new Iran nuclear agreement that went into effect earlier this year was supposed to open the door to the resumption of trade with the Islamic republic. But the U.S. government is maintaining an onerous set of unilateral sanctions that prohibit U.S. companies from entering this lucrative market. As Pulitzer Center grantee Reese Erlich reports for Vice News, “Chinese and European companies are scrambling to invest in Iran and bringing home multibillion-dollar deals—while U.S. corporations, barred from doing business with a newly-opening Islamic Republic, are forced to watch as their competitors tap into a market of 80 million people.” The big winners thus far: Airbus, the European consortium which assembles its planes in France and Germany, signed letters of intent to sell 118 jets to Iran at a list price of $27 billion; Italian companies signed memorandums of understanding to invest $3.5 billion to refurbish Iranian oil refineries and $6 billion to provide heavy machinery and France's Total plans to pump 150,000 to 200,000 barrels per day in Iran. Meanwhile China is formalizing plans for $600 billion in investments over the next 10 years. “China is building roads, dams and other major infrastructure projects. It has also flooded the Iranian market with low-cost consumer goods, including cheap cell phones,” says Reese. ON THE MOVE Last week was one of the busiest ever for the Pulitzer Center. Many thanks to our journalists and staff members who shared our recent reporting with schools and communities up and down the East Coast and out to Illinois. Ann Peters accompanied grantees Stephanie Hanes and Alisa Roth to William & Mary for the Sharp Writer-in-Residence Program, a semester-long course jointly administered by the college and the Pulitzer Center. Jon Sawyer was with grantee Emily Feldman at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, for a symposium on human-rights reporting and presentations by Pulitzer Center student fellows Kayli Plotner and Anna Spoerre. Photojournalist Matt Black discussed his "Geography of Poverty" project at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Boston University, where he was joined by Nathalie Applewhite and the performers and journalists associated with Circus Without Borders. Mark Schulte traveled with the Circus crew to Simmons College, Emerson College, La Salle College and six Boston-area secondary schools. Back in Washington, DC, grantees and filmmakers Ian James and Steve Elfers, Larry C. Price, and Sharron Lovell shared their documentary work with an audience of 225-plus at the DC Environmental Film Festival. They reached hundreds more as they fanned out to sessions at Campus Consortium partner American University and, with Fareed Mostoufi and Lauren Shepherd, to eight DC-area secondary schools. After a discussion on displacement, one high school student was quick to make the global/local connection: "What sticks with me is the fact that many countries are alike and going through similar things," he told Fareed. "People in DC are being moved. The same thing is happening in China."  Until next week, Tom Hundley Senior Editor

EUROPEAN MUSLIMS Against a growing anti-Muslim backlash in this country and across Europe, Pulitzer Center grantee Nick Street travels to Malmo, Sweden, where young Muslim activists are trying to forge a Muslim identity that is compatible with Western culture and resistant to the blandishments of radicalization. For this story in the Los Angeles Times, Nick visits a madrasa where students study not only the Koran and sharia law, but also the Swedish language and social responsibility, which includes interreligious dialogue, especially with the Jewish community. "All our education programs have the effect of immunizing our youth against radicalization," the academy’s young imam, pictured above, told Nick. "They (ISIS) would never be able to recruit anyone from our group because we equip them with the knowledge and methodologies to counter any argument from groups like (ISIS). More than this, our youth are effecting positive change by stopping other youth from joining extremist groups." Nick is the senior writer with the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California, a Campus Consortium partner. We're eager for educators from secondary schools to universities to incorporate Nick's reporting into their courses using the Pulitzer Center Lesson Builder. Click here for a lesson designed by our education team. It's easy and free to design lessons, drawing from our growing archive of reporting on religion and public policy. THE GANGS OF ZINDER Niger is the poorest of the world’s poor countries. It ranks dead last on the U.N. Human Development Index. “Food, jobs, schools, infrastructure—the landlocked country, 80 percent of which is occupied by the Sahara, lacks it all,” writes Pulitzer Center grantee Jillian Keenan. “Military coups, political instability, and ethnic rebellions have hampered tourism, mining, and other economic sectors. Jobs are scant; less than 20 percent of the population is able to read.” Its teeming urban areas are fertile ground for gang violence, which can easily transmute into Islamic extremism. Boko Haram, the notorious extremist group from across the border in Nigeria, has come looking for recruits. Jillian, in a gripping dispatch for the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine, travels to the epicenter of Niger’s gang violence in the city of Zinder, where she profiles a gang leader named Baho who, after witnessing the extreme violence of Boko Haram, has had a change of heart and is beginning to reconsider his own violent ways. IRELAND’S FADED CHURCH The Catholic Church has been in a steep decline across Europe, no more so than in Ireland, a country that once thought of itself as “the most Catholic” of them all. Church attendance has plummeted from nearly 90 percent in the mid-1980s to less than 20 percent today. Michael Bodley and Meredith Stutz, two of our student fellows from Elon University, were in Ireland to look at some of the ways the church is responding to the crisis. In this story for the Huffington Post, they speak with a young man studying for the priesthood—a once common but now rare thing in Ireland—who understands the difficult road ahead and foresees a smaller church led by fewer priests. “You just have to be honest with people, not hide behind religious fronts,” the seminarian tells them. “People see if you’re being hypocritical—they can feel that. You need to be authentic.” Until next week, Tom Hundley Senior Editor

We hope to support you and your classrooms each week by sending "News Bites," short lesson plans that relate to the news that week and utilize an article, photograph, podcast and/or short film by a Pulitzer Center grantee. We'll also feature an in-depth "Lesson of the Week" and highlight upcoming events hosted by the Pulitzer Center's Education Department.