Arnold Zeitlin January 13, 1932 – December 26, 2023
By Ghulam Suhrawardi 5 January 2023
Amid this year’s New Year’s festivities, the news of Arnold’s death came as a shock. Arnold Stanley Zeitlin passed away peacefully in his sleep on December 26, 2023 in northern Virginia. Born on January 13, 1932, Arnold was nearly 92 years old.
Arnold was born in New York and was blessed throughout his life with the love and support of his many family members and broad network of friends and colleagues, including myself. Over the many years of our collaborations, we developed a meaningful bond and friendship.
Arnold was a correspondent for over 30 years and bureau chief of the Associated Press, assigned to West Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and the Philippines.
For United Press International, he served as vice president and managing director of the Asia-Pacific division based in Hong Kong. From 1998 to 2001, he was director of the Asian Center of The Freedom Forum, a nonprofit foundation devoted to news media issues.
In 2001, he applied his vast experience to his own venture and founded Editorial Research and Reporting Associates, Inc., which consults news media and journalism educators primarily in Asia to support the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He has lectured and taught at Yale, Boston, and Northeastern universities. He was a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV). He served in Ghana between 1961-63.
Arnold was diagnosed in 2016 with stage 4 multiple myeloma. After a kidney specialist found high protein levels in his blood tests, a cancer specialist started him on a program of chemotherapy (pills), a brief radium therapy, and monthly consultations. In Arnold’s blog in August, he wrote, “I’m hoping to reach my 92nd birthday in January. Don Baylor, the major league outfielder and manager, died in 2017 after surviving multiple myeloma for 14 years, and some people claim to have survived almost 30 years.” He wrote interesting snippets such as these on his site: https://azeitlin.wordpress.com/.
I met Arnold about 15 years ago through an introduction from a friend in Washington, DC, political circles. Since then, Arnold has been associated with our journal, passionately covering all South Asia Journal’s book reviews. His primary interest was Bangladesh and Pakistan, with some issues in greater South Asia. One can google and see dozens of his reviews in the journal (www.southasiajournal.net). He took his position on the Editorial Advisory Board very creatively.
His loss is like vast numbers of bricks falling off our building. While the building is still erect, its incline will show forever. I developed a very intimate relationship with him and many times considered him a mentor. He is one of the few men I know who met Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and many other personalities during the Bangladesh liberation turbulences during 1969-71 which gave him a unique point of view on the regions history. Arnold’s knowledge about that period (1971) is very sacred to my heart. He was my dear friend, and I will miss him always.
The author is the Publisher of the South Asia Journal.
