Lawfare Podcast Episode #39: Laura Dean on the Bloodbath in Egypt

Benjamin Wittes
Wednesday, August 28, 2013, 7:30 PM
Lawfare readers already know Laura Dean, author of the Cairo Diary we have been running the past few months. I met Laura a few years ago, when she was a Senate staffer and a close mutual friend brought her by my house for a drink. We have been good friends ever since, and I have been meaning to have her on the Podcast since the late unpleasantness in Egypt began. Getting a good enough line to Egypt to make a recording listenable, however, was a bit of a problem.

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Lawfare readers already know Laura Dean, author of the Cairo Diary we have been running the past few months. I met Laura a few years ago, when she was a Senate staffer and a close mutual friend brought her by my house for a drink. We have been good friends ever since, and I have been meaning to have her on the Podcast since the late unpleasantness in Egypt began. Getting a good enough line to Egypt to make a recording listenable, however, was a bit of a problem. (While Brookings has a studio here in Washington, Laura does not have one in Cairo.) So when she told me she was going to be in Maine for a few days, I had her block out some time to join me by phone. For those who have not followed Laura's writing at Lawfare, at the New Republic (here and here), at the London Review of Books (here and here), at Slate, and at Foreign Policy, the conversation is a good introduction to her journalistic voice---a rich combination of intimate knowledge of people and place, critical distance from it all, and a healthy dollop of unapologetic emotional involvement. For those who have been following the diary, here's Laura in person---the Cairo Diary, Audio Edition.

Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.

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