A lunch seminar on perspectives on the North Caucasus from two reporters was held Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 12:00 p.m. in 012 Bendheim Hall. The lunch was co-sponsored by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Woodrow Wilson School, Near Eastern Studies, and the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies. Michael Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies, and Jason Lyall, Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs, led the seminar featuring journalists Fatima Tlisova and Valeri Dzuysev. 

Fatima Tilsova is an independent journalist who has reported extensively on the North Caucasus and is a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University.  She has worked for ten years as a correspondent for a number of independent Russian papers as well as international media. She has also served as chief of the North Caucasian bureau of the Russian news agency Regnum. Tilsova is a regular writer for IWPR (London) and for the Jamestown Foundation (Washington, DC). She has received the Rory Peck award and the German Zeit-Stiftung award for her reporting on the conflict in the North Caucasus and her efforts to help fellow journalists.

Valeriy Dzutsev is a Muskie Fellow at the University of Maryland and the Coordinator for North Caucasus at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). In 1999 he became local coordinator for the British-based Centre for Peacemaking and Community Development in North Ossetia. He began working for IWPR in 2000 as a contributor, and in September, 2002 became coordinator for the North Caucasus.