About
Terrell Jermaine Starr is a Senior Reporter at the Root, where he writes about US-Russia politics and race in America, and he is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He previously worked at Foxtrot Alpha, a blog that focuses on the military, technology, and policy. In 2016, he was FUSION’s national political correspondent covering the 2016 presidential campaign.
An authority at the intersection of global politics and social justice
He lived in Ukraine as a Fulbright fellow and a freelance journalist. He’s also lived in Georgia, where he volunteered for the Peace Corps. Starr has more than 4 years of experience living in the former Soviet Union and has stayed in Ukraine for at least 3 months every year since 2016. Starr earned a Master’s degree in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Illinois. He is a graduate of Philander Smith College, an HBCU in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he earned a Bachelor’s in English.
Starr, who has more than 10 years of journalism experience, is currently writing his memoir on how his upbringing informed his understanding of US-Russian foreign policy and the intersections between American white supremacy and imperialism.
In 2018, Diversity in National Security Network and New America selected him as one of the top African-American experts in foreign policy and national security. Starr is also a 2018-2020 Global Strategist Association fellow, which is a fellowship that aims to place Black people in foreign policy discussions and positions of power. He is the founder and host of Black Diplomats, a weekly foreign policy podcast that explores the world via travel, politics, culture, and news from a Black perspective.
He regularly appears on the In The Thick Podcast and The Young Turks, where he provides analysis on Eastern European and U.S. politics.
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