Columbia Journalism Review presents "We Want To Negotiate" with Joel Simon

Starting in late 2012, Westerners working in Syria — journalists and aid workers — began disappearing without a trace. A year later the world learned they had been taken hostage by the Islamic State. Throughout 2014, all the Europeans came home, first the Spanish, then the French, then an Italian, a German, and a Dane. In August 2014, the Islamic State began executing the Americans — including journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, followed by the British hostages.

Kyle Pope is the Editor in Chief and Publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review. A seasoned newspaper editor and reporter who worked for a decade at The Wall Street Journal, was editor-in-chief of The New York Observer, deputy editor of Portfolio magazine, and editor-in-chief of a chain of hyperlocal weeklies in Manhattan

Janine di Giovanni is an author, foreign correspondent, and current Edward R. Murrow fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a regular contributor to The Times, Vanity Fair, Granta, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Di Giovanni has written a number of books and made two long format documentaries for the BBC. She is herself a subject in the documentary films No Man's Land (1993), Bearing Witness (2005) and 7 Days in Syria (2015). In 2013, di Giovanni was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world of armed violence by the organization Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).