CNN-Brent Stirton

Peter Bergen, journalist and national security analyst for CNN, is the 2014 recipient of the Ambrose Award.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – The Rutgers Living History Society will present its 2014 Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award to Peter L. Bergen, broadcast journalist and the author of several books on Osama bin Laden’s personal war with the United States. 

The Rutgers Living History Society, comprising participants in the Rutgers Oral History Archives program, will honor Bergen at its annual meeting on Friday, May 16. Richard Edwards, Rutgers’ executive vice president for academic affairs, will present the award.

“Oral history is about listening to people tell their stories – all sorts of people, and all sorts of stories,” Bergen said. “The Rutgers Living History Society and the Rutgers Oral History Archives contribute unstintingly to that effort. I’m proud to receive this award and to be associated, through the society and the archives, with great practitioners of this art.”

Bergen is a CNN national security analyst and frequent commentator on the network. He directs the New America Foundation’s National Security Program in Washington, D.C., and is a fellow at Fordham University’s Center on National Security. He is also a member of the Homeland Security Project, the organization established as a successor to the 9/11 Commission.

In 1997, Bergen produced CNN’s historic interview with Osama bin Laden, in which bin Laden publicly declared war on the United States. He is the author of several books on bin Laden and the war on terror, including Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden – from 9/11 to Abbottabad (Crown, 2012); The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda (Free Press, 2011); The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader (Free Press, 2006); and Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (Free Press, 2001).

Bergen was born in Minneapolis and was raised in London. In 2008, he was an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University from 2003 to 2007. From 2003 to 2011 he was a research fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security.

Bergen is on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and has testified before a dozen congressional committees, including the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is editor of the South Asia Channel, a joint publication of Foreign Policy, the New America Foundation and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Past recipients of the Stephen E. Ambrose Award include presidential historian Michael Beschloss, filmmaker Steven Spielberg, broadcast journalist and author Tom Brokaw, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, military historian Rick Atkinson and Studs Terkel.