International

Meeting of Iraqi Minds Prompts Tumult

By John Burnett

Published April 18, 2003 at 9:00 PM PDT

This story was published more than 21 years ago.

Iraqi intellectuals, persecuted for decades, meet for the first time since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. The gathering at the University of Baghdad was called to form a committee on Iraqi cultural life. But it quickly devolved into a raucous, free-wheeling debate. NPR's John Burnett reports.

International

John Burnett

John Burnett is a national correspondent based in Austin, Texas, who has been assigned a new beat for 2022—Polarized America—to explore all facets of our politically and culturally divided nation. Prior to this assignment, Burnett covered immigration, Southwest border affairs, Texas news and other national assignments. In 2018, 2019 and again in 2020, he won national Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio-Television News Directors Association for continuing coverage of the immigration beat. In 2020, Burnett along with other NPR journalists, were finalists for a duPont-Columbia Award for their coverage of the Trump Administration's Remain in Mexico program. In December 2018, Burnett was invited to participate in a workshop on Refugees, Immigration and Border Security in Western Europe, sponsored by the RIAS Berlin Commission.