A local university has announced plans for an investigative journalism seminar in which faculty and students will search for clues as to what really happened when Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered in Karachi in 2002.
The Pearl Project of Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies will be funded by Prince al-Waleed and led by Barbara Feinman Todd, associate dean of journalism, and former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Q Nomani, who is to join Georgetown as a professor in the practice of journalism. Nomani, Pearl’s friend and colleague from his days at the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau, rented the Karachi home where Pearl and his wife Mariane were staying at the time of his disappearance. “Sadly, we couldn’t save Danny, but journalists are sort of like the Marines. We can’t leave the truth behind,” Nomani said. “For the five years since Danny was killed, I have wanted to find out the full truth behind Danny’s kidnapping and murder.”
The project will consist of graduate students and undergraduate English majors. Those enrolled in the seminar will investigate motive and attempt to determine who really killed Pearl. They will also examine the wider relationship between the Muslim world and the press and profile others who have died in the front lines of journalism.
The project will take place during the Fall 2007 semester, and has the support of PearlÂ’s family and his widow, Mariane, who now lives in Paris. |