Helena Cobban
Encyclopedia
Helena Cobban is a British-American writer and researcher on international relations
, with special interests in the Middle East, the international system, and transitional justice
. In March 2010, she founded a new book-publishing company, Just World Publishing, LLC. By the end of 2010 its principal imprint, Just World Books, had published four titles on current foreign-policy issues.
, England in 1952 to James Cobban
and Lorna Mary Cobban, she was educated at Queen Anne's School
, Caversham and St. Hugh's College, Oxford, where she received her BA (Hons) in Philosophy and Economics in 1973. She was awarded an MA from Oxford in 1981.
From 1974 through 1981, she worked as a Beirut-based correspondent for news outlets including The Christian Science Monitor
, The Sunday Times
, ABC News
, and the BBC
.
In 1982 she moved to the United States to take up a research fellowship at the Harvard University
Center for International Affairs, where she wrote her first book, The Palestinian Liberation Organisation. It was published in English in 1984, was translated into Arabic and several other languages, and remains in print.
Since then she has published six additional books: three others on questions of Middle East war and peace, and three on other international issues. Her seventh book, Re-engage! American and the World After Bush was published in 2008. Rep. Lee H. Hamilton
, Co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, described it as, "An impassioned, thought-provoking, and accessible brief from a highly esteemed journalist on how all of us, as individuals, can act to help better our country and world." She has also contributed chapters to around 20 scholarly books edited by others.
In 1991-93 she was Co-Director of the Middle East project at Search for Common Ground
, in Washington, DC.
From 1990 through 2007, Cobban contributed a regular column on global issues to The Christian Science Monitor, and from 1993 through 2006 she contributed a separate column to the Arabic-language international daily Al-Hayat.
Since February 2003 she has published "Just World News", a blog on global issues that has gained a broad international readership and has been cited in Le Monde diplomatique
and elsewhere. She is a Contributing Editor at Boston Review
, where she has published essays on Palestinian-Israeli issues, Iraq, and post-conflict justice questions. She contributes a weekly news analysis on Middle East developments to Inter Press Service
and makes periodic contributions to "ForeignPolicy.com" and The Christian Science Monitor.
She is a member of Charlottesville Friends Meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia
, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies
, and sits on the Middle East East Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch
. In 2007-08 she was a 'Friend in Washington' with the Friends Committee on National Legislation
.
She is married to William B. Quandt
, who is the Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia
.
broke out in 1987. The book was heavily criticized in a review that Daniel Pipes
wrote for the Washington Post.
Between 1984 and 2000 Cobban published numerous articles and book chapters on Palestinian political developments. Since 2001 she has published several lengthy essays on the topic in Boston Review
, including two essays on Hamas that drew on original interview material with Hamas
leaders, including Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh.
In June 2009 she conducted another interview with Meshaal, in which he said, "I have said I accept a Palestinian state if Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 line. That doesn’t annul the historical fact of the Israeli occupation of 1948, but Hamas and the other factions have all accepted this solution of a Palestinian state at the 1967 line."
Over the years she has published interviews with numerous other Palestinian (and Israeli) leaders and analysts.
and others.
Cobban has helped to lead, or participated in, several Track II diplomacy
programs between Israelis and Palestinians and has developed some nuanced assessments of the potential benefits and pitfalls of such efforts. In 2009 and 2010 she served as Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest
.
described it as a "perceptive and cool dissection of a truly complex issue." In a 1997 monograph she started to look at the surprisingly fruitful peace diplomacy that had taken place on this track since the 1991 Madrid Conference. She expanded on that work in her 2000 book, described by Raymond Hinnebusch as "A must-read for anyone with interest in the Middle East or the dynamics of peace negotiations in general."
, a topic that had been approached by most earlier researchers in a more strictly deontological way.
One of her most notable findings was that the average cost of trying a perpetrator at the ICTR was $42.3 million, while the average cost of processing each accused atrocity perpetrator in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
was $4,290 and the cost of demobilizing and reintegrating into society each former fighter from the civil wars in South Africa and Mozambique—many of whom had committed atrocities—was under $1,100.
During and after her work on the book, she conducted interviews and documentary research in the three countries studied; at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
, the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia; and in Northern Uganda. She published field notes and reflective essays from most of these trips on her Just World News blog and on the specially created Transitional Justice Forum blog.
with other authors
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
, with special interests in the Middle East, the international system, and transitional justice
Transitional justice
Transitional justice generally refers to a range of approaches that states may use to address past human rights violations and includes both judicial and non-judicial approaches. They include series of actions or policies and their resulting institutions, which may be enacted at a point of...
. In March 2010, she founded a new book-publishing company, Just World Publishing, LLC. By the end of 2010 its principal imprint, Just World Books, had published four titles on current foreign-policy issues.
Life
Born in AbingdonAbingdon, Oxfordshire
Abingdon or archaically Abingdon-on-Thames is a market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, England. It is the seat of the Vale of White Horse district. Previously the county town of Berkshire, Abingdon is one of several places that claim to be Britain's oldest continuously occupied town, with...
, England in 1952 to James Cobban
James Cobban
Sir James Macdonald Cobban, CBE, DL was an English educator and headmaster, as well as a prominent lay leader in the Church of England...
and Lorna Mary Cobban, she was educated at Queen Anne's School
Queen Anne's School
Queen Anne's School in Caversham, Berkshire is an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18, situated just north of the River Thames and Reading town centre and occupying a campus.There are around 330 pupils. Nearly half are boarders...
, Caversham and St. Hugh's College, Oxford, where she received her BA (Hons) in Philosophy and Economics in 1973. She was awarded an MA from Oxford in 1981.
From 1974 through 1981, she worked as a Beirut-based correspondent for news outlets including The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
, The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
, and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
.
In 1982 she moved to the United States to take up a research fellowship at the Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
Center for International Affairs, where she wrote her first book, The Palestinian Liberation Organisation. It was published in English in 1984, was translated into Arabic and several other languages, and remains in print.
Since then she has published six additional books: three others on questions of Middle East war and peace, and three on other international issues. Her seventh book, Re-engage! American and the World After Bush was published in 2008. Rep. Lee H. Hamilton
Lee H. Hamilton
Lee Herbert Hamilton is a former member of the United States House of Representatives and currently a member of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council. A member of the Democratic Party, Hamilton represented the 9th congressional district of Indiana from 1965 to 1999...
, Co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, described it as, "An impassioned, thought-provoking, and accessible brief from a highly esteemed journalist on how all of us, as individuals, can act to help better our country and world." She has also contributed chapters to around 20 scholarly books edited by others.
In 1991-93 she was Co-Director of the Middle East project at Search for Common Ground
Search for Common Ground
Search for Common Ground is an international non-profit organization operating in nearly 30 countries whose mission is to transform the way the world deals with conflict – away from adversarial approaches toward cooperative solutions. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with the majority of...
, in Washington, DC.
From 1990 through 2007, Cobban contributed a regular column on global issues to The Christian Science Monitor, and from 1993 through 2006 she contributed a separate column to the Arabic-language international daily Al-Hayat.
Since February 2003 she has published "Just World News", a blog on global issues that has gained a broad international readership and has been cited in Le Monde diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique is a monthly newspaper offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first created mainly for a diplomatic audience as its name implies...
and elsewhere. She is a Contributing Editor at Boston Review
Boston Review
Boston Review is a bimonthly American political and literary magazine. The magazine covers, specifically, political debates, literature, and poetry...
, where she has published essays on Palestinian-Israeli issues, Iraq, and post-conflict justice questions. She contributes a weekly news analysis on Middle East developments to Inter Press Service
Inter Press Service
Inter Press Service is a global news agency. Its main focus is the production of independent news and analysis about events and processes affecting economic, social and political development....
and makes periodic contributions to "ForeignPolicy.com" and The Christian Science Monitor.
She is a member of Charlottesville Friends Meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville is an independent city geographically surrounded by but separate from Albemarle County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, and named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of King George III of the United Kingdom.The official population estimate for...
, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies
International Institute for Strategic Studies
The International Institute for Strategic Studies is a British research institute in the area of international affairs. It describes itself as "the world’s leading authority on political-military conflict"...
, and sits on the Middle East East Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
. In 2007-08 she was a 'Friend in Washington' with the Friends Committee on National Legislation
Friends Committee on National Legislation
The Friends Committee on National Legislation a 501 lobbying organization in the public interest founded in 1943 by members of the Religious Society of Friends...
.
She is married to William B. Quandt
William B. Quandt
William B. Quandt is an American scholar, author, professor and member of the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He previously served as senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and as a member on the National Security Council in the...
, who is the Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
.
Contributions to Middle East studies
Through her reporting and analytical work, Cobban has made notable contributions to the study of Palestinian politics, Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, Lebanese politics, Israeli-Syrian peacemaking, the US war in Iraq, and the broader study of the Middle East:Palestinian politics
For her 1984 book The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power, and Politics she interviewed many founders and leaders of the PLO and used much original material gathered during her reporting work in Beirut in the late 1970s. In the book she concluded that the center of gravity of the Palestinian national movement was shifting toward those Palestinians living inside their homeland, a diagnosis that proved correct when the First IntifadaFirst Intifada
The First Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem....
broke out in 1987. The book was heavily criticized in a review that Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
wrote for the Washington Post.
Between 1984 and 2000 Cobban published numerous articles and book chapters on Palestinian political developments. Since 2001 she has published several lengthy essays on the topic in Boston Review
Boston Review
Boston Review is a bimonthly American political and literary magazine. The magazine covers, specifically, political debates, literature, and poetry...
, including two essays on Hamas that drew on original interview material with Hamas
Hamas
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
leaders, including Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh.
In June 2009 she conducted another interview with Meshaal, in which he said, "I have said I accept a Palestinian state if Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 line. That doesn’t annul the historical fact of the Israeli occupation of 1948, but Hamas and the other factions have all accepted this solution of a Palestinian state at the 1967 line."
Over the years she has published interviews with numerous other Palestinian (and Israeli) leaders and analysts.
Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking
She has authored numerous articles, book chapters, and blog posts about issues in this field, arguing in particular that the United States and other sponsors of the peace diplomacy should aim rapidly at securing a final peace agreement rather than losing time and political capital chasing interim deals. This has involved challenging the reliance on pre-agreement confidence-building measures as championed by Dennis RossDennis Ross
Dennis B. Ross is an American diplomat and author. He has served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W...
and others.
Cobban has helped to lead, or participated in, several Track II diplomacy
Track II diplomacy
Track II diplomacy is a specific kind of informal diplomacy, in which non-officials engage in dialogue, with the aim of conflict resolution, or confidence-building...
programs between Israelis and Palestinians and has developed some nuanced assessments of the potential benefits and pitfalls of such efforts. In 2009 and 2010 she served as Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest
Council for the National Interest
The Council for the National Interest is a 501 organization in the United States advocating a "new direction for U.S. Middle East policy." With its sister organization the Council for the National Interest Foundation it works to educate about and promote what it describes as "even handed...
.
Lebanese politics
In her 1985 book, she analyzed Lebanese politics as being the result of complex interactions among the country's different population groups, which she divided—based on an analysis by Fuad I. Khuri—into "sects" and "minorities." The book, which also built on considerable on-the-ground reporting, identified and analyzed the rise of the country's previously marginalized Shiite community. She made numerous reporting trips back to Lebanon after 1999, and has published two notable articles about the rise of Hezbollah.Syrian-Israeli peacemaking
Her 1991 book tracked the entanglement of the Syrian-Israeli relationship in broader Cold War concerns. Zbigniew BrzezinskiZbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....
described it as a "perceptive and cool dissection of a truly complex issue." In a 1997 monograph she started to look at the surprisingly fruitful peace diplomacy that had taken place on this track since the 1991 Madrid Conference. She expanded on that work in her 2000 book, described by Raymond Hinnebusch as "A must-read for anyone with interest in the Middle East or the dynamics of peace negotiations in general."
Contributions to Transitional Justice Studies
Cobban's 2006 book Amnesty after Atrocity?: Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes studied the outcomes—according to a broad range of social indicators—of the very different policy choices that by South Africa, Rwanda, and Mozambique made in the early to mid-1990s, as they attempted to deal with the tragic legacies of atrocities committed during earlier period of civil war and mass violence. This was one of the first attempts to adopt an essentially utilitarian approach to the challenge of transitional justiceTransitional justice
Transitional justice generally refers to a range of approaches that states may use to address past human rights violations and includes both judicial and non-judicial approaches. They include series of actions or policies and their resulting institutions, which may be enacted at a point of...
, a topic that had been approached by most earlier researchers in a more strictly deontological way.
One of her most notable findings was that the average cost of trying a perpetrator at the ICTR was $42.3 million, while the average cost of processing each accused atrocity perpetrator in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid. Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations were invited to give statements about their experiences, and some were selected...
was $4,290 and the cost of demobilizing and reintegrating into society each former fighter from the civil wars in South Africa and Mozambique—many of whom had committed atrocities—was under $1,100.
During and after her work on the book, she conducted interviews and documentary research in the three countries studied; at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan Genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan...
, the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia; and in Northern Uganda. She published field notes and reflective essays from most of these trips on her Just World News blog and on the specially created Transitional Justice Forum blog.
Books
- The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power, and Politics, Cambridge U.P., 1984
- The Making of Modern Lebanon, London: Hutchinson, and Boulder, Co: Westview, 1985
- The Superpowers and the Syrian-Israeli Conflict, Praeger, 1991
- The Moral Architecture of World Peace: Nobel Laureates Discuss our Global Future, University Press of Virginia, 2000
- The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-96 and Beyond, U.S. Institute of Peace, 2000
- Amnesty after Atrocity?: Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes, Paradigm, 2006
- Re-engage! American and the World After Bush, Paradigm, 2008.
with other authors
External links
- "Just World News" blog
- "Fair Policy, Fair Discussion" blog at the CNICouncil for the National InterestThe Council for the National Interest is a 501 organization in the United States advocating a "new direction for U.S. Middle East policy." With its sister organization the Council for the National Interest Foundation it works to educate about and promote what it describes as "even handed...
Foundation - Archive of weekly analysis of Middle East news, at Inter Press Service
- Personal website
- Boston Review
- Transitional Justice Forum blog