Larry Abramson
Larry Abramson is NPR's National Security Correspondent. He covers the Pentagon, as well as issues relating to the thousands of vets returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Prior to his current role, Abramson was NPR's Education Correspondent covering a wide variety of issues related to education, from federal policy to testing to instructional techniques in the classroom. His reporting focused on the impact of for-profit colleges and universities, and on the role of technology in the classroom. He made a number of trips to New Orleans to chart the progress of school reform there since Hurricane Katrina. Abramson also covers a variety of news stories beyond the education beat.
In 2006, Abramson returned to the education beat after spending nine years covering national security and technology issues for NPR. Since 9/11, Abramson has covered telecommunications regulation, computer privacy, legal issues in cyberspace, and legal issues related to the war on terrorism.
During the late 1990s, Abramson was involved in several special projects related to education. He followed the efforts of a school in Fairfax County, Virginia, to include severely disabled students in regular classroom settings. He joined the National Desk reporting staff in 1997.
For seven years prior to his position as a reporter on the National Desk, Abramson was senior editor for NPR's National Desk. His department was responsible for approximately 25 staff reporters across the United States, five editors in Washington, and news bureaus in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The National Desk also coordinated domestic news coverage with news departments at many of NPR's member stations. The desk doubled in size during Abramson's tenure. He oversaw the development of specialized beats in general business, high-technology, workplace issues, small business, education, and criminal justice.
Abramson joined NPR in 1985 as a production assistant with Morning Edition. He moved to the National Desk, where he served for two years as Western editor. From there, he became the deputy science editor with NPR's Science Unit, where he helped win a duPont-Columbia Award as editor of a special series on Black Americans and AIDS.
Prior to his work at NPR, Abramson was a freelance reporter in San Francisco and worked with Voice of America in California and in Washington, D.C.
He has a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Abramson also studied overseas at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and at the Free University in Berlin, Germany.
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Tuesday on Capitol Hill a panel of top military officers — including the Joint Chiefs of Staff — faced a Senate panel that grilled them about the problem of sexual assault in the military. There was consensus that the problem is unacceptable, but there was less agreement about solutions. One controversial proposal, backed by some Senators, calls for taking responsibility for military trials of sexual assault cases from commanders. NPR's Larry Abramson reports on the debate over the military chain of command and sexual assault.
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The Air Force Special Victims' Counsel is a new effort to provide support to sexual assault victims. These military attorneys will represent the victim only, and the hope is that this kind of support will make it easier for victims to report assaults without feeling like they're being victimized again.
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The U.S. will soon begin to open combat positions to women. That's already the case in Israel, where women say it is an important step but doesn't guarantee full equality. The military's upper echelons remain male-dominated. -
The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines must submit plans Wednesday for ending the policy that keeps women from serving in ground combat positions. The move will open up more than 200,000 positions in the military to them, but the change won't end questions about the role of women in the armed forces.
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Automatic budget cuts have pushed Air Force bases to slash their flying budgets even though it means grounding pilots and reducing readiness. The cancellations are boosting the arguments of those who want the military excepted from sequestration cuts. -
Advocates for intervening in Syria say if Israel can get past Syria's air defenses, surely the U.S. can. But experts say Israel's limited strikes can't be compared with the huge resources needed for a sustained operation to establish a no-fly zone, for example.
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The use of chemical weapons has been taboo since World War I, when poison gas inflicted a million casualties. Despite the destruction of large stockpiles, controlling or destroying remaining weapons remains tricky. -
But one of the unanswered questions was who were they protesting against? Obama, Israel or their own government. -
President Obama's past relations with Israel's government have not always gone well. The two nations insist they've reached new levels of security cooperation. They have publicly debated issues ranging from Iran to the Mideast peace process.
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Palestinians object to all Israeli settlements in the West Bank. But one in particular, the E-1, is a major source of friction. Israelis say it's merely the expansion of an existing settlement. But critics say the Israelis are building a ring around Palestinian neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, cutting them off from the West Bank.
