SALVEtoday Archives
19-Mar-04
PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING WAR CORRESPONDENT CHRIS HEDGES PRESENTS ATWOOD LECTURE
By Public Affairs Staff
NEWPORT, R.I. - New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, an author and 20-year war correspondent who shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of global terrorism, will lecture on the topic "Is There Such a Thing as a Just War?" on Wednesday, March 24 at Salve Regina University.
Hedges' appearance, part of the Atwood Lecture Series supported by the Donaldson Charitable Trust, is free and open to the public. It will be presented at 7 p.m. in the lecture hall at O'Hare Academic Center, Ochre Point Avenue.
In his 20 years as a journalist for many of the most respected news organizations in the United States, Hedges has reported from the world's most war-ravaged regions, from the Middle East and Central America to the Balkans and the Persian Gulf. For more than a decade, Hedges covered hot spots for The New York Times, first in 1991 in Operation Desert Storm, then in Bosnia and Kosovo from 1995-98, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2002, he was part of a team of Times reporters that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for the paper's 2001 coverage of terrorism. The winner of numerous other awards for his coverage, he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism, Hedges was also a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1999.
His acclaimed book, "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," which was published in 2002 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, drew on his distinguished career as a war correspondent to offer provocative new perspectives on the nature of conflict. He is also the author of "What Every Person Should Know About War," published in 2003.
Prior to joining the New York Times, Hedges worked for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and National Public Radio. He holds a B.A. in English literature from Colgate University and a master of divinity from Harvard University. He is lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
His discussion at Salve Regina will address humanity's love affair with war, offering a thought-provoking perspective on the subject. A reception will follow the lecture, during which time Hedges will be available to sign his most recent book.
Past Atwood lecturers at Salve Regina have included Elie Wiesel, journalist, novelist, teacher and Nobel Peace Prize recipient; Robert A.F. Thurman, scholar, author, former Tibetan Buddhist monk and director of Tibet House in New York City; Pete Seeger, legendary folk singer and activist; Li-Young Lee, renowned American poet; Marcus Burke, curator of arts at New York's Hispanic Society of America; and Yvonne Haddad, Christian-Muslim relations expert.