[8] He attended Harvard University, where he developed an interest in international relations after spending time working for the Labour Party in the United Kingdom.

[9] He earned a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where he co-founded the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, and an M.Phil.

[4][10] Finer also spent a year in Hong Kong as a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar, working as a reporter and editor at the Far Eastern Economic Review.

[11] Finer was a foreign and national correspondent at the Washington Post, where he reported from more than twenty countries and spent eighteen months covering the war in Iraq, embedding with the U.S. Marines during the 2003 invasion and based in Baghdad in 2005–2006.

He also covered conflicts in Gaza (2009), Russia/Georgia (2008) and Israel/Lebanon (2006); the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign; and the 2004 Major League Baseball playoffs.