Mariane Pearl to Speak at MCLA

- February 22, 2008

Mariane Pearl

NORTH ADAMS - Mariane Pearl, wife of slain journalist and former North Adams Transcript reporter Daniel Pearl, will appear at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts on Wednesday, March 5, at 7:30 p.m.

Part of the Hardman Lecture Series, her talk, "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl," will take place in the Church Street Center. The event is free and open to the public.

A freelance journalist, Mariane Pearl writes a column, "Global Diary," for Glamour magazine that spotlights women activists around the world. The columns have been collected into a book, "In Search of Hope."

Pearl was thrust into the spotlight in 2002 when her husband, a bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and murdered by Islamic extremists in Pakistan in early 2002.

Born Mariane Van Neyenhoff in Clinchy, Haute-de-Seine, France, Pearl was raised in Paris. She met her husband while he was on assignment there. They married in August 1999, and moved to Mumbai, India, where Daniel was the South Asia bureau chief for The Journal.

The couple later traveled to Karachi, Pakistan, to cover aspects of the war on terrorism. It was in Karachi that Daniel was kidnapped and later killed. Mariane was pregnant at the time, and their son, Adam Daniel, was born in Paris three months later.

Pearl's memoir, "A Mighty Heart," which deals with the events surrounding her husband's kidnapping and assassination, was adapted for a film of the same name starring Angelina Jolie, with whom she'd become a close friend, as herself and Dan Futterman as her husband. The film was released last spring.

She is a practicing Nichiren Buddhist and a member of Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist association that promotes world peace and individual happiness.

Daniel Pearl began his career in journalism at the Transcript and later at The Berkshire Eagle before joining The Wall Street Journal.

The Hardman Lecture Series is made possible through the generosity of the Hardman Family Endowment.