Greater Des Moines Committee on Foreign Relations: Speaker Series
Greater Des Moines Committee on Foreign Relations is excited to announce our final speaker for the 2022-2023 Season. Thom Shanker, Director of the Project for Media & National Security will speak to members and guests on the topic of National Security and make the case that it must include food, health, climate, and data security.
Mr. Shanker was named Director in June 2021, after a nearly quarter-century career with The New York Times, including 13 years as Pentagon Correspondent covering the Department of Defense, overseas combat operations, and national security policy.
Early in the war in Afghanistan, Thom embedded with Army Special Forces at Kandahar. He subsequently conducted dozens of reporting trips to Afghanistan and Iraq, and embedded in the field with units from the squad and company level through battalion, brigade, division, and corps. Most recently, he served as Deputy Washington Editor for The Times, managing coverage of the military, diplomacy, and veteran's affairs.
Mr. Shanker is co-author of "Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda", published in August 2011 by Henry Holt & Co. The book became a New York Times best seller.
Before joining The Times, he was foreign editor of The Chicago Tribune. He also served as The Tribune's senior European correspondent, based in Berlin. Most of that time was spent covering the wars in former Yugoslavia, where Thom was the first reporter to uncover and write about the Serb campaign of systematic mass attacks on Muslim women. In addition, he served as The Tribune's Moscow correspondent, covering the start of the Gorbachev era to the death of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the communist empire in Eastern Europe.
More information about Mr. Shanker and about the Greater Des Moines Committee on Foreign Relations is on our website www.gdmcfr.org.If you are interested in joining us for the timely talk, please email events@gdmcfr.org for details and to rsvp.
