Tunku Varadarajan

Tunku Varadarajan /ˈtʊŋkuː ˌvɑːrədəˈrɑːdʒən/ (born Patanjali Varadarajan^[2] in 1962) is a British-Indian writer and journalist, formerly editor of Newsweek Global and Newsweek International.^[3] He is currently the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Research Fellow in Journalism at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a contributing editor at POLITICO Europe.

Early life and education[]

Tunku Varadarajan was born in Delhi, India. His earliest years were spent in New York, where he attended The Town School.^[4] He later attended Mayo College in Ajmer, Rajasthan, India with his brother Siddharth Varadarajan, as well as Dulwich College, London. After high school, he attended Trinity College, Oxford University from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in law in 1984.^[5]

Career[]

Tunku Varadarajan in 1997

After six years as a lecturer in law, Tunku Varadarajan left Oxford in 1993 to join The Times as a leader (editorial) writer under the editor, Peter Stothard. He specialized in international affairs, law, society, and culture. In 1996, he moved to Spain as the newspaper's Madrid bureau chief. In 1997, he was named the newspaper's New York City bureau chief.

In 2000, Varadarajan joined the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, under its editor, Robert L. Bartley. He worked there as a senior editorial writer, deputy editorial features editor, chief television and media critics, and, for five years, as the paper's editorial features ("op-ed") editor (a post to which he was appointed by the paper's editorial page editor, Paul A. Gigot.) He also wrote a column, "Citizen of the World," for which he received an award from South Asian Journalists Association in 2002. The citation read, "for a year's worth of his consistently engaging and controversial opinion pieces about South Asia (and other global topics) in the newspaper and on its sister site, OpinionJournal.com."^[6]

In 2009, Varadarajan left Forbes for The Daily Beast, where he was appointed writer-at-large, tasked with writing opinion columns on politics, foreign affairs, and American culture. When Newsweek merged with The Daily Beast in December 2010, Varadarajan was named editor of Newsweek International by editor-in-chief Tina Brown. In December 2012, he became the first editor of Newsweek Global, the all-digital publication that took the place of the magazine's print edition. He resigned from that job in late April 2013.

Varadarajan has been associated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University for several years, most recently as the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Research Fellow in Journalism. He is the editor of Defining Ideas, a Hoover Institution publication.^[7]

Controversies[]

In November 2009, subsequent to the Fort Hood shooting, Forbes.com published an article by Varadarajan titled "Going Muslim", a play on the colloquial American phrase "Going Postal". The opinion essay prompted some controversy, including political objections from some students at New York University, where he was a clinical professor, as well as in the media.^[8][9] NYU President John Sexton condemned the remarks as offensive.^[10] In the article "Is Your Professor an Islamophobe?", Columbia University epidemiologist and HuffPost contributor, Abdul El-Sayed, quoted Varadarajan's article, among others, when he discussed phenomenon of "a growing number of academics using (their) intellectual identity to promote intolerance and xenophobia against Islam and Muslims".^[11]

Personal life[]

A British citizen, Varadarajan lives in Brooklyn, New York, United States with his wife Amy Finnerty and their three children.^[12] He is a member of the Century Association in New York, and is on the Media Advisory Committee of AmeriCares.^[13] In June 1997, Liesl Schillinger wrote a "Talk of the Town" item about Varadarajan, who had just completed his first month as the London Times correspondent. She called the 34-year-old "one of the city's most in-demand bachelors."^[14]

References[]