In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Kenneth R. Rosen, the author of Troubled, to discuss the brutal emotional, physical, and sexual abuse carried out in America's behavioral treatment programs.
Kenneth R. Rosen is a senior editor and correspondent at Newsweek based in Italy. He is a contributing writer at WIRED, and the journalist-in-residence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the author of two books of narrative nonfiction, an incoming Executive-in-Residence at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and a 2021 Alicia Patterson Fellow. Previously, he spent six years on staff at The New York Times.
Rosen is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award in international reporting. Among other honors, he received the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents for his reporting on Iraq in 2018 and was a finalist for his reporting on Syria in 2019.
He has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and VQR. His work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, German, and Japanese.
As a foreign correspondent and magazine writer, he has reported from more than 13 countries, appeared on NPR, PRI's "The World," The Guardian's daily podcast, and NRC's (Netherlands) podcast, among others. And he has briefed the State Department on his reporting from the Levant.
He has received generous support from MacDowell (Calderwood Foundation Art of Nonfiction Grantee), the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Literary Journalist-in-Residence), the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (Grantee '17, '20), the Fulbright Program, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, the Fund for American Studies (Robert Novak Fellow), the Steven Joel Sotloff Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation with John Jay’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the Logan Nonfiction Program at the Carey Institute for Global Good.
Educated at Columbia University and the Savannah College of Art and Design, he lectured at the University of Massachusetts Boston, has held workshops on creative nonfiction for Catapult magazine, and has volunteered with troubled teens seeking to return to school and complete their bachelor's degrees.
He works out of tiny, bunker-like wood shed he converted into a writer's-bungalow/machinist shop. It reminds Zoom call participants of Ted Kryzinski's cabin.
Kenneth R. Rosen on the Failed Promise of America's Behavioral Treatment Programs