Encore

Franklin & Marshall’s online cultural calendar

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas D. Kristof

November 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Barshinger Center for Musical Arts
Pick up your free ticket at the Box Office

Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes columns that appear twice a week.

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 also was an early opponent of the Iraq War and is known as an advocate of women’s rights in the developing world.

Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, are authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a bestselling book that explores women’s rights in Africa and Asia. They also collaborated on China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia. “ I’ve encountered brutally depressing atrocities from Congo to Cambodia, but side by side with the worst of humanity I always seem to encounter the best,” Kristof recently told WorldHum. “What does depress me sometimes is when I come back to the United States and find many people uninterested in any cause larger than themselves.”

Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. 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. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six and traveled to more than 140 countries and all 50 states. He has been to every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs and an African airplane crash.

“Travel is, of course, addictive,” Kristof told WorldHum. “I formed my habit when I was a student at Oxford. Issues of global poverty fascinated me in part because the stakes are so high. If we can just do the right thing and get policy right, millions of lives can be saved. And when we screw up, kids die. That makes you pretty passionate about doing everything you can to get it right.”

This lecture is sponsored by the Alice Drum Women's Center; Bonchek, Brooks, Schnader and Ware College Houses; CLAS;  the Office of the Dean of the College;  the departments of English, French, German, History, Religious Studies, Russian, and  Women's and Gender Studies; International Studies; the Mellon Fund; and the Public Affairs Speakers Fund.

The event is free and open to the public, however, tickets required. Tickets are available at Roschel box office between 12 noon - 6 p.m.

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