President's Forum: Nicholas Kristof [SOLD OUT]
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Join us for an inspiring evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and social activist Nicholas Kristof. Having built a reputation for insightful and crusading journalism Kristof is now at the forefront of advocating to change the way we address pressing issues in the world, including violence and women’s oppression. At this special program Kristof will join Asia Society President Josette Sheeran for a wide-ranging and provocative discussion involving topics such as China, journalism, advocacy, and philanthropy.
Kristof is the co-author (in collaboration with his wife Sheryl WuDunn) of a number of ground-breaking books. Their book Half the Sky has inspired the Half the Sky Movement, which seeks to put an end to the oppression of women and girls worldwide through a transmedia project involving video, web content, games, and other educational tools. Their latest book, A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity, calls for the general public to play a fuller role as global citizens to make the world a better place for all.
“Nobody clarifies the social challenges of our time, or the moral imperative to help meet them, better than Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn..." — U.S. President Bill Clinton
• Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, Sheryl WuDunn will not be able to join us at this Presidents Forum program as previously announced.
Reception and book signing follow the program. Kristof's titles will be available through AsiaStore at the event.
AsiaSociety.org Q & A with Nicholas Kristof
Speakers
Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon and went on to graduate from Harvard College, after which he studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. While working in France after high school, he caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia during his student years, writing articles to cover his expenses. After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book The Presidents. He later was Associate Managing Editor, responsible for Sunday editions.
In 1990 Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Kristof then won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for what the judges called "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." He has also won other prizes including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly award, the Online News Association award, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award. Kristof has taken a special interest in Web journalism and was the first blogger on The New York Times website; he also tweets and has a Facebook fan page and a channel on YouTube. A documentary about him, Reporter, premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2009 and has been shown on HBO.
Kristof and WuDunn are joint authors of China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia, Half the Sky: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide and A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity.
Josette Sheeran is the seventh president and CEO of Asia Society. In the position, which she assumed in June 2013, she is responsible for leading and advancing the organization's work throughout the U.S. and Asia, and across its disciplines of arts and culture, policy and business, and education. She is former Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. In 2011, Forbes named Sheeran the world's 30th most powerful woman; Foreign Policy has listed her among its top 100 women on Twitter; and Sheeran's TED Talk on ending world hunger has been viewed more than one million times.
Part of our President's Forum, a series of programs in which Asia Society President Josette Sheeran interviews prominent guests on a broad range of Asian and Asian American topics, including politics, economics, culture, and the media. Past guests have included Arianna Huffington, Sarah Sze and Siddhartha Mukherjee, Maya Lin, Mira Nair, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Tan Dun, Julie Taymor, Thich Nhat Hanh, Bill Richardson, and Richard Holbrooke.
President’s Forum programs are endowed by a grant from the Hazen Polsky Foundation.