Graeme Wood

Graeme Wood, last spring’s Class of 1952 Speaker for Religious Understanding, is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and lecturer in political science at Yale University. His Atlantic cover story, “What ISIS Really Wants,” was the most-read piece on the internet in 2015. Mr. Wood spent the last few years reading and analyzing Islamic State propaganda and speaking with its followers from around the world. Mr. Wood is the author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters With the Islamic State. He has been a Turkey and Kurdistan analyst for Jane’s, a contributing editor to The New Republic, and books editor of Pacific Standard. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The American Scholar, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, and the International Herald Tribune.

“Savagery we were unaccustomed to seeing was put on camera. The Islamic State wanted us to see, in high definition, and show the entire world. This was disarming to many in my profession. For media and journalists there has been a learning curve in how we approach this story, this content, and how we cover it as news.”