David Kenner

David Kenner is a reporter and the Middle East coordinator for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. As an ICWA fellow (Saudi Arabia, 2019–2021), he was based in Riyadh and Beirut, reporting on political and economic upheaval in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Previously, he was Foreign Policy magazine’s Middle East bureau chief from 2013 to 2018, based in Beirut and Cairo and reporting regularly from Iraq, Jordan and Turkey. His work has been published in The Atlantic, Politico, Slate and elsewhere.

Posts and Dispatches from David Kenner:

• Saudi Arabia’s coffee craze
  Cafés are at the forefront of social change in the kingdom, but entrepreneurs still face big obstacles....

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• Beirut’s social fabric is tearing apart
  Nearly three months after the port explosion, the fallout in one destroyed neighborhood reflects a country in collapse....

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• Saudi Arabia’s imagined worlds
  Fiction has enabled authors to advance daring critiques of the kingdom’s social and political order....

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• Lebanon is collapsing
  The catastrophic blast at Beirut’s port is the latest example of the country’s institutions falling apart....

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• Saudi Arabia had big plans for 2020. Then the pandemic struck
  The coronavirus is challenging the kingdom’s social and economic order....

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• Why Saudi Arabia can’t win in Lebanon
  Economic crisis is revealing the endemic problems of foreign influence....

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• In Lebanon, protest anger simmers under curfew
  Political and economic failings threaten government’s Covid-19 response. ...

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• An oil price war in the time of coronavirus
  A dispute between Moscow and Riyadh is dealing the US economy a blow and highlighting Saudi Arabia’s financial challenges. ...

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• Down and out in Riyadh
  Millions of foreign workers flock to Saudi Arabia for work but some earn barely enough to get by. ...

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• Saudi education 101
  How the kingdom’s schools and universities shape its youth....

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