Emily Harris
International Correspondent Emily Harris is based in Jerusalem as part of NPR's Mideast team. Her post covers news related to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She began this role in March of 2013.
Over her career, Harris has served in multiple roles within public media. She first joined NPR in 2000, as a general assignment reporter. A prolific reporter often filing two stories a day, Harris covered major stories including 9/11 and its aftermath, including the impact on the airline industry; and the anthrax attacks. She also covered how policies set in Washington are implemented across the country.
In 2002, Harris worked as a Special Correspondent on NOW with Bill Moyer, focusing on investigative storytelling. In 2003 Harris became NPR's Berlin Correspondent, covering Central and Eastern Europe. In that role, she reported regularly from Iraq, leading her to be a key member of the NPR team awarded a 2005 Peabody Award for coverage of the region.
Harris left NPR in December 2007 to become a host for a live daily program, Think Out Loud, on Oregon Public Broadcasting. Under her leadership Harris's team received three back to back Gracie Awards for Outstanding Talk Show, and a share in OPB's 2009 Peabody Award for the series "Hard Times." Harris's other awards include the RIAS Berlin Commission's first-place radio award in 2007 and second-place in 2006. She was a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford University in 2005-2006.
A seasoned reporter, she was asked to help train young journalist through NPR's "Next Generation" program. She also served as editorial director for Journalism Accelerator, a project to bring journalists together to share ideas and experiences; and was a writer-in-residence teaching radio writing to high school students.
One of the aspects of her work that most intrigues her is why people change their minds and what inspires them to do so.
Outside of work, Harris has drafted a screenplay about the Iraq war and for another project is collecting stories about the most difficult parts of parenting.
She has a B.A. in Russian Studies from Yale University.
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In the 1990s, Israelis and Palestinians made temporary arrangements in the West Bank as they worked toward a peace deal. The talks are now in the deep freeze, but the arrangements are entrenched.
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Palestinian kids in Gaza went back to school this past week in buildings damaged by the war, with children homeless and traumatized, and more than the usual overcrowding they face every year.
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From the Palestinian perspective, a big obstacle to peace is the presence of 350,000 Israelis on land expected to be part of any future Palestinian state. Two of those settlers offer their viewpoints.
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Most social networks require users to be at least 13. But Itay Eshet's daughter, like many kids, wanted to join Facebook when she was just 10. So Eshet created a site just for younger kids, designed to protect them from bullying and other risks while teaching them to navigate social media safely.
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Ruth Calderon's first speech in parliament led some to call her the leader of a Jewish renaissance. But others view her as a real threat — to Judaism itself.
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The term shuttle diplomacy may be over-used, especially in the pursuit of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But that is exactly what Secretary of State John Kerry did on his latest visit to the Mideast. Kerry spent long, separate sessions with Palestinian and Israeli officials.
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Secretary of State John Kerry returns to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan this week to continue to press Israeli and Palestinian leaders to sit down at the negotiating table. But in the run-up to this visit, two Israeli ministers have come out against the two-state solution that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he supports.
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Bank foreclosures often force people out of their homes. Some houses re-sell, and new people move in. Five years ago, NPR's Emily Harris bought a house that sold in foreclosure. An evening ring at her doorbell led her to meet the person who had lived there before.
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The Buchinger Clinic in southern Germany is famous for promoting fasting as a cure-all. There is little hard science to back up the program, but that doesn't lessen its appeal to guests from around the globe. About two-thirds are repeat customers.
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While the U.S. is trying to calm some of Moscow's anxieties over a missile defense it wants to put in Poland and the Czech Republic, skepticism is growing in the intended host nations, as well. Russian President Vladimir Putin remains critical of U.S. plans.