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| Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof spoke to a full house Wednesday evening at Mitchell Hall. |
Oct. 4, 2002--New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof urged Americans to become active participants in foreign policy, especially in light of the possible U.S. military campaign against Iraq in a speech Wednesday, Oct. 2, in Mitchell Hall.
“We need to engage in the outside world,” Kristof said. “We have a tendency to see ourselves very far removed. We need to escape this, for if we try to run, it will catch up to us.”
The speech, entitled “From Baghdad to Beijing: Does the U.S. Shape the World?” was offered free to the public as part of UD’s continuing America and the Global community Lecture Series.
Kristof, fresh from a trip to Iraq, has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and Asia since Sept. 11, 2001, assessing the impact of U.S. foreign policy in the Arab and Muslim worlds. His columns appear Tuesdays and Fridays on the Opinion/Editorial pages of The New York Times.
Since joining The Times in 1984, Kristof has served in a variety of posts, including associate managing editor, economics-business correspondent based in Los Angeles and bureau chief in China.
He and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a married couple in 1990 for their coverage of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They have also won the George Polk Award for foreign reporting and the Overseas Press Club award for international reporting. Books by Kristof and WuDunn include “China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power” (1994) and “Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia” (2000).
Kristof said that the United States is likely to invade Iraq by the beginning of next year and fears that the campaign’s repercussions will be greater than those from the Persian Gulf War in the early ’90s.
“Saddam Hussein is a menace who is deeply unpopular in Iraq, but the sense that I also get is Iraqis don’t like Americans,” he said. “It may be a tougher military opposition than we think.
“There will be much less for us to bomb. I fear that it will involve street-to-street fighting. Hussein cares less about civilians than we do, which may give him the upper hand.”
Kristof said his travels have awakened him to the foreign world, challenging him to think in new ways for better understanding.
“The idea that we can stay in this country and be largely immune from the forces raging in other countries is wrong,” he said. “We in the U.S. should be very careful about overseas engagements, but the danger for a great power is not only imperial overstretch but imperial understretch.
“We’ve become very inward looking while the rest of the world has become very outward looking.”
Kristoff said several actions will aid the Unites States in becoming more aware of the foreign world, including sending students abroad, forming a variety of foreign language skills and developing relationships among other countries.
Kristof’s speech was the first of UD’s America and the Global Community Lecture Series, which is part of an initiative designed to build stronger and more direct connections from the University to the global community.
For more information, call 831-8044, or visit [www.udel.edu/global].
Article by Aime Voith AS 2003
Photo by David Hartranft BE 2005
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