Nicholas Kristof

January 26, 2009 7:00 p.m. Apollo Multipurpose Room WSU Student Union Free & Open to the Public No Tickets or Registration Required

Nicholas D. Kristof, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, writes columns for The New York Times that appear each Sunday and Tuesday. He was one of the first to sound the alarm on the genocide in Darfur and has visited that region nine times in an effort to call attention to the crisis. He was also an early opponent of the Iraq War and is well-known as an advocate of Women’s rights in the developing world.  In particular he has helped lead the fight against sex trafficking in countries such as Cambodia, India, and Pakistan.

Born on April 27, 1959, Nicholas Kristof grew up on a cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon, and raised sheep for his Future Farmers of America project. He graduated from Harvard College in three years, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1981, and then won first class honors in his study of law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. After working in France, he caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia, writing articles to cover his expenses. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to well over 100 countries. He has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs, war, and an African airplane crash.

Nicholas Kristof joined The New York Times in October 1984, initially covering economics. After that, he served as a business correspondent based in Los Angeles, Hong Kong bureau chief, Beijing bureau chief, and Tokyo bureau chief. In 2000, he covered the presidential campaign and in particular Governor Bush, and he is the author of the chapter on Mr. Bush in the reference book “The Presidents.” Before taking up the column, Kristof was associate managing editor for The Times, responsible for Sunday editions.

In 1990 Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism, and Kristof won again in 2006 for his coverage of Darfur and other humanitarian issues. Nicholas Kristof has won many other prizes including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly Award, and the American Society of Newpaper Editors award.

Kristof, who was the first blogger in The New York Times, has been active on-line and still blogs at www.nytimes.com/ontheground. He has an annual contest to choose a university student to take with him on a reporting trip to the developing world.

Kristof and WuDunn are authors of China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power (1995) and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (2000). Kristof and WuDunn are the parents of Gregory, Geoffrey, and Caroline. Kristof enjoys running, backpacking in the Oregon Cascades, and having his Chinese and Japenese corrected by his children.