Nicholas D. Kristof

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Nicholas D. Kristof

Nicholas Donabet Kristof (born April 27, 1959) is a political scientist, author, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist specializing in East Asia. He is currently a columnist for The New York Times and previously served as the as The New York Times' Bureau Chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. He has written a number of books on Asia, most notably China Wakes: The struggle for the soul of a rising power (1994) and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a rising Asia (2000), both co-authored with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn. He has also published Japanese Economy at the Millennium (1999), a look at the problems and issues ailing the modern economy of Japan.

[edit] Biography

The son of Ladis Kristof, a Romanian-born Armenian who immigrated to the United States after World War II and was for many years a professor of political science at Portland State University, Nicholas Kristof grew up on a cherry farm in Yamhill, Oregon and later went on to become a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College and Magdalen College, Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

In 1990, Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, earned a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for their reporting on the pro-democracy student movement and the related Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Kristof has also received the George Polk Award and an award from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting. Kristof's op-eds in the Times focus on pollution and human rights.

Kristof was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2005 "for his powerful columns that portrayed suffering among the developing world's often forgotten people and stirred action." Kristof was against the war in Iraq, but promotes greater international intervention (presumably through the United Nations and similar organizations) to stop genocide such as that taking place in the Darfur conflict in Sudan. In 2006, Kristof won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "for 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 raised consciousness of the success of Portland, Oregon's light rail, bicycle paths, and urban growth boundaries in such sprawling, auto-congested suburban areas as New York City. Kristof has been a pioneer in online journalism creating multimedia reports that accompany his columns on the web site of The New York Times.

Early in May 2003, Kristof spoke to Joseph Wilson about the reliability of documents claiming that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. The Times published on May 6, 2003 an op-ed by Kristof stating that, "a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged."^[1] This article by Kristof was mentioned in the federal indictment of I. Lewis Libby as a contributing factor in Libby's effort in May 2003 to learn about Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger^[2].

Both Nicholas Kristof & Samantha Power, another Pulitzer Prize winner, are well known for their efforts to increase media attention on the crises of the Darfur region of Sudan.

In 2002, Kristof wrote a series of columns indirectly suggesting that scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill might have perpetrated the 2001 anthrax attacks. Hatfill sued The New York Times and Kristof for libel; the lawsuit is still ongoing, but Kristof has been dropped as a defendant.^{[citation needed]}

Kristof is critical of the West's anti-sweatshop movement, claiming that the sweatshop model is primary reason why "Taiwan and South Korea [which accepted sweatshops as the price of development] are modern countries with low rates of infant mortality and high levels of education; in contrast, every year 3.1 million Indian children die before the age of 5, mostly from diseases of poverty like diarrhea."^[3] He claims that sweatshop work is often "less dangerous or arduous… than most alternatives in poor countries" and that supporting sweatshops in places like Africa will boost economic reform because "If Africa could establish a clothing export industry, that would fight poverty far more effectively than any foreign aid program."^[4]

One push needs to come from African countries themselves: a crackdown on corruption and red tape. But another useful step would be for American students to stop trying to ban sweatshops, and instead campaign to bring them to the most desparately poor countries.^[4]

In 2006, The New York Times held the "Win a Trip With Nick Kristof" contest, designed to allow one university student to accompany him to Africa. After 3,800 students entered, Kristof chose Casey Parks of Jackson, Miss., to report with him. In September 2006, the team traveled to Equitorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic to report on AIDS, poverty and maternal mortality. In addition to Kristof's columns, Parks kept a blog at parks.blogs.nytimes.com.