News Release

Local angle: High Point

New York Times columnist Kristof,
Pulitzer winner, to speak April 11

CHAPEL HILL – Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and commentary, will speak April 11 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

His free public talk will be from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in 111 Carroll Hall. Kristof’s visit to UNC is sponsored by the Phillips Ambassadors Program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The new program, made possible by a gift from High Point business executive and former U.S. ambassador Earl N. “Phil” Phillips Jr., offers scholarships to undergraduates to study in Asia. Phillips earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Carolina in 1962.

Kristof joined the Times in 1984, initially covering economics, then working as a correspondent in Los Angeles and bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. In 1990, Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism.

Kristof became a columnist for the Times in November 2001. In 2006, he won a second Pulitzer, for commentary. The Pulitzer Board cited “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.” His op-ed columns appear on Sundays and Tuesdays in the Times.

Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six and traveled to 120 countries – plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. The Harvard Crimson reported last June that he has survived a plane crash in Uganda and an assault by drunken soldiers in Ghana, was held at gunpoint in Beirut and eluded rebels chasing him through the jungle in the Congo.

Kristof graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied law and graduated with first-class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Tapei. After working in France, Kristof caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia, writing articles to cover his expenses.

Kristof has written a number of books on Asia, including two with WuDunn, “China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power” (1994) and “Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia” (2000).

For more information, contact Kim Glenn at kjsglenn@yahoo.com, (919) 270-6159.

- 30 -

Related link: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/sep06/phillipsambassador090606.htm

College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Weaver Spurr, (919) 962-4093, spurrk@email.unc.edu