February 19, 2021 | Watch Video
Karen DeYoung, Senior National Security Correspondent and Associate Editor, Washington Post
Jane Ferguson, Special Correspondent, PBS NewsHour
David Sanger, National Security Correspondent, New York Times
Elisabeth Bumiller, Washington Bureau Chief, New York Times (Moderator)

The Women's Foreign Policy Group hosted a panel of experienced journalists to discuss the most pressing foreign policy and national security issues facing President Biden and his administration as he begins his term. During the conversation with Washington Post National Security Correspondent Karen DeYoung, PBS NewsHour Correspondent Jane Ferguson, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger, and moderator and New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Elisabeth Bumiller, the speakers covered a variety of key issues, including the potential for renewed US-Iran nuclear negotiations, the future of American military presence in Afghanistan, the civil war in Yemen, US relations with both China and Russia, and the trust deficit that the US faces as it struggles to repair its reputation and relations with its partners.
 
Karen DeYoungKaren DeYoung is the senior national security correspondent and an associate editor of The Washington Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she has served as bureau chief in Latin America and London, a correspondent covering the White House, US foreign policy and the intelligence community, as well as assistant managing editor for national news, national editor and foreign editor. DeYoung was a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and is the author of Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell. She is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including the 2009 Overseas Press Club award for international affairs coverage, 2003 Edward Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting, Sigma Delta Chi awards for investigative and foreign reporting, and 2002 Pulitzer Prize awarded to The Washington Post for national coverage of the war on terrorism. @karendeyoung1

Jane FergusonJane Ferguson is a special correspondent for the NewsHour, reporting from across the Middle East, Africa and beyond. Reporting highlights include front-line dispatches from the war against ISIS in Iraq, an up-close look at Houthi-controlled Yemen, reports on the war and famine in South Sudan, and most recently, the situation in Afghanistan. Areas of particular interest are the ongoing cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Islamist groups around the world, and US foreign policy. Her reporting on the war in Yemen was honored with an Alfred I duPont-Columbia Award, a News and Documentary Emmy Award and a Peabody Award nomination. In 2019, Ferguson was named the George Polk Award recipient for Foreign Television reporting. Before coming to the NewsHour Ferguson reported extensively for Al Jazeera English and CNN International. She is a guest professor at Princeton, where she teaches a course on war reporting. She has lived in the Middle East for 12 years and is fluent in Arabic. She has been based in New York City since 2020. @JaneFerguson5

David SangerDavid Sanger is National Security Correspondent for The New York Times and one of the newspaper’s senior writers. With a team of his Times colleagues, he was the winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting, the third in Mr. Sanger’s 35-year career at the Times. His newest book, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age, examines the emergence of cyberconflict as the primary way large and small states are competing and undercutting each other, changing the nature of global power. He is also the author of two Times bestsellers on foreign policy and national security: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (2009) and Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (2012). He served as the Times’ Tokyo Bureau Chief, Washington Economic Correspondent, White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush Administrations and Chief Washington Correspondent. @SangerNYT

Elizabeth BumillerElisabeth Bumiller (Moderator) is Washington bureau chief of The New York Times. Previously she was The Times' Washington editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. Before that she covered the Pentagon, the White House, John McCain's 2008 campaign and New York's City Hall for The Times. She also worked for The Washington Post in Washington, New Delhi, Tokyo and New York. In 2006 and 2007, Bumiller was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. She has published three books, the most recent of which was Condoleezza Rice: An American Life. She serves on the WFPG Board of Directors. @BumillerNYT