Larry Abramson
Larry Abramson is NPR's National Security Correspondent. He covers the Pentagon, as well as issues relating to the thousands of vets returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Prior to his current role, Abramson was NPR's Education Correspondent covering a wide variety of issues related to education, from federal policy to testing to instructional techniques in the classroom. His reporting focused on the impact of for-profit colleges and universities, and on the role of technology in the classroom. He made a number of trips to New Orleans to chart the progress of school reform there since Hurricane Katrina. Abramson also covers a variety of news stories beyond the education beat.
In 2006, Abramson returned to the education beat after spending nine years covering national security and technology issues for NPR. Since 9/11, Abramson has covered telecommunications regulation, computer privacy, legal issues in cyberspace, and legal issues related to the war on terrorism.
During the late 1990s, Abramson was involved in several special projects related to education. He followed the efforts of a school in Fairfax County, Virginia, to include severely disabled students in regular classroom settings. He joined the National Desk reporting staff in 1997.
For seven years prior to his position as a reporter on the National Desk, Abramson was senior editor for NPR's National Desk. His department was responsible for approximately 25 staff reporters across the United States, five editors in Washington, and news bureaus in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The National Desk also coordinated domestic news coverage with news departments at many of NPR's member stations. The desk doubled in size during Abramson's tenure. He oversaw the development of specialized beats in general business, high-technology, workplace issues, small business, education, and criminal justice.
Abramson joined NPR in 1985 as a production assistant with Morning Edition. He moved to the National Desk, where he served for two years as Western editor. From there, he became the deputy science editor with NPR's Science Unit, where he helped win a duPont-Columbia Award as editor of a special series on Black Americans and AIDS.
Prior to his work at NPR, Abramson was a freelance reporter in San Francisco and worked with Voice of America in California and in Washington, D.C.
He has a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Abramson also studied overseas at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and at the Free University in Berlin, Germany.
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The U.S. will soon begin to open combat positions to women. That's already the case in Israel, where women say it is an important step but doesn't guarantee full equality. The military's upper echelons remain male-dominated. -
The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines must submit plans Wednesday for ending the policy that keeps women from serving in ground combat positions. The move will open up more than 200,000 positions in the military to them, but the change won't end questions about the role of women in the armed forces.
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Automatic budget cuts have pushed Air Force bases to slash their flying budgets even though it means grounding pilots and reducing readiness. The cancellations are boosting the arguments of those who want the military excepted from sequestration cuts. -
Advocates for intervening in Syria say if Israel can get past Syria's air defenses, surely the U.S. can. But experts say Israel's limited strikes can't be compared with the huge resources needed for a sustained operation to establish a no-fly zone, for example.
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The use of chemical weapons has been taboo since World War I, when poison gas inflicted a million casualties. Despite the destruction of large stockpiles, controlling or destroying remaining weapons remains tricky. -
Voters appear to have re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to another term. But his right-wing alliance suffered serious losses. Center and left parties defied the polls and won half the seats in parliament.
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Soldiers around the world will stop what they're doing Thursday to take part in suicide prevention training. The "stand down" is part of the Army's response to an alarming suicide rate — on average, one a day. -
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday. A U.S. soldier is accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar on Sunday. The incident has raised questions about the future of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.
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Occupy Wall Street protesters say the high cost of college is one of the barriers between them and a good life. College costs have skyrocketed, though maybe not as much as you might think. -
The nation's for-profit colleges and universities received more than $1 billion in benefits from the Post-Sept. 11 GI Bill in the last year alone. But some say the for-profit schools aren't policed well enough — which creates an opening for abuses — and their dropout rates are too high.
