Background and Age

Fareed Rafiq Zakaria was born on January 20, 1964, in Maharashtra, India. He grew up in a Muslim household. His father, Rafiq Zakaria, was a renowned politician and his mother, Fatima Zakaria, worked in the Sunday Times of India as an editor. For her schooling, he went to the Cathedral and John Connon School of Mumbai. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in arts from Yale University.

At college, he was the president of the University’s Yale Political Union. He was also the chief editor of the Yale Political Monthly. He also joined the Scroll and Key Society, where he became an associate of the Party of the Right. He attended Harvard later where he got his PhD in Government in 1993. After presenting a study project based on America’s foreign policy at Harvard, he became the running editor of Foreign Affairs.

Marriage, Wife, and Kids

Fareed has been married to Paula Throckmorton Zakaria. She has a business of designing jewelry. Their relationship started with a blind date set up by their mutual friend. His only son Omar, his two daughters Lila and Sofia that live with them.

Career and Net Worth

At Columbia University, Fareed Rafiq Zakaria worked as an adjunct professor and taught foreign customs. In October 2010, he was made the Editor of ‘Newsweek International.’ Zakaria served as a news analyst on ABC’s ‘This Week’ from the year 2002 to the year 2007. In the US, Zakaria’s ‘Global Public Show’ was aired twice a week on CNN.

Zakaria wrote several books for the welfare of international relations. His book, The Future of Freedom, defines democracy in the Western world as liberal democracy, which is the combination of participatory politics and constitutional liberalism. The other titles of his books are ‘Liberal Democracy’, ‘The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role’, ‘From Wealth to Power’, ‘Can America Be Fixed?’, ‘The American Encounter’, and ‘The Post-American World’. He also writes about different topics in daily journals, brochures, and magazines.

Zakaria’s has been nominated five times for the ‘National Magazine Award.’ He received numerous ‘Emmy’ awards for his show 'Peabody'. In January 2010, he was awarded with the ‘Padma Bhushan’ by the Government of India, for his excellent devotion to journalism.

Fareed is currently the anchor of CNN’s ‘Fareed Zakaria GPS.’

Controversy

Fareed was accused of plagiarizing content from a New York magazine essay to use in a column he wrote for Time magazine. He was fired from Time magazine because of the claim. Fareed said jokingly, that he thinks that the entire controversy was his fault. He claims that he was told by his editor to cite once. He said that he was merely borrowing some quotes and then identifying that other writer as the author. Instead of using a passive formula, he made conscious changes in wording. Fareed made these little changes in order to disguise his borrowing. His accusers have cited many examples to prove that he tried to intentionally hide the source of the quotes.