Tunku Varadarajan is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution

Tunku Varadarajan

Biography: 

Tunku Varadarajan was the Hoover Institution's institutional editor and editor-in-chief of Hoover’s in-house publication Defining Ideas. He was previously a research fellow at Hoover and the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Fellow in Journalism.  A writer-at-large at the Daily Beast, he was a former editor of Newsweek and Newsweek International. Previously, he was executive editor (opinions) at Forbes, assistant managing editor and op-ed editor of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York bureau chief for The Times (of London). Born in India, he is a British citizen. A visiting scholar at New York University's Department of Journalism, he is a former lecturer in law at Trinity College, Oxford. He has also taught at NYU's Stern School of Business, the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. Varadarajan has a BA in law, with honors, from Oxford University.

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Recent Commentary

Fighting Clean

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Hoover Digest
Friday, July 2, 2010

Kenneth Starr as peacemaker? The former special prosecutor offers Hoover fellow Tunku Varadarajan a bracing defense of political civility.

Analysis and Commentary

Why Obama's Immigration Speech Was a Failure

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Daily Beast
Thursday, July 1, 2010

The president stepped up Thursday to update his campaign promise of immigration reform. But Tunku Varadarajan says his words were banal, completely conventional, and full of empty rhetoric...

Analysis and Commentary

A Turning Point in the War

by Tunku Varadarajan with Charles Hillvia Daily Beast
Tuesday, June 29, 2010

General Petraeus’ hearings made Obama a political hostage to his new Afghan commander—but also greatly improved U.S. chances of winning...

Analysis and Commentary

Obama’s 2012 Power Play

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Daily Beast
Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Obama’s decision to replace Gen. McChrystal with Iraq war hero David Petraeus was more than just a way to keep the Afghan battle on course. Tunku Varadarajan on the president’s masterstroke...

Analysis and Commentary

Why I Feel Tony Hayward's Pain

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Daily Beast
Thursday, June 17, 2010

The embattled BP exec was pelted by so many inane questions from the mediocrities in Congress they almost turned the oil spill villain into a sympathetic figure...

Analysis and Commentary

Nikki Haley and the New Racial Face of the South

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Daily Beast
Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Nikki Haley is poised to join Bobby Jindal as conservative Indian Americans running Deep South states. Tunku Varadarajan on how they’re exploding racial attitudes—and why the Dems don’t get it...

Analysis and Commentary

Bet on California's GOP Amazons

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Daily Beast
Monday, June 7, 2010

In spite of their rousing Silicon Valley credentials, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina are emphatic outsiders—which makes their primary races the ones to watch Tuesday. Tunku Varadarajan rates their chances come November...

Analysis and Commentary

Can the Oil Crisis Save Washington?

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Daily Beast
Monday, May 31, 2010

President Obama doesn’t own the BP spill; it owns him. Tunku Varadarajan on the politics of catastrophe...

Analysis and Commentary

It's Not Obama's Oil Spill

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Daily Beast
Thursday, May 27, 2010

By propagating a message that government can solve all ills, he made it easy to blame him. But it's BP's mess—and courts should decide the damages, says Tunku Varadarajan...

Analysis and Commentary

The Last Liberal?

by Tunku Varadarajanvia Daily Beast
Wednesday, May 26, 2010

In his provocative new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, Paul Berman criticizes liberals for refusing to stand against Islamic extremism and defend Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Tunku Varadarajan speaks to him about why ideas still matter...

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