Ben Bradlee, vice president and executive editor of The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal, will serve as Isabella Cannon Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership at Elon University. Bradlee will give a public lecture at 6:30 p.m., Monday, Feb. 27 in McCrary Theatre, located in the Center for the Arts on campus. He will also hold a question-and-answer session with students and meet with student members of the Isabella Cannon Leadership Program.
Bradlee will be the third Isabella Cannon Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership, which is funded by the estate of the late Isabella Cannon, a 1924 alumnus and former mayor of Raleigh, N.C. The visiting professor teaches leadership classes and works directly with students in the Isabella Cannon Leadership Program. Former presidential adviser and journalist David Gergen was the first visiting professor in January 2004 and former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman served as the second visiting professor in March 2005.
Bradlee redefined investigative journalism and transformed The Washington Post into one of the most important news sources in the world during his tenure from 1968 to 1991. The Post’s reports on Watergate led to government investigations, criminal proceedings and hearings that eventually led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. Bradlee’s ingenuity also led to the creation of The Post’s Style section in 1968, a revolutionary feature at the time that is now part of many daily newspapers. The Post won 18 Pulitzers under Bradlee, who currently serves as the paper’s vice president at large.
After graduating from Harvard University in 1942, Bradlee served four years in the Navy before beginning his journalism career in 1946 as a reporter at the New Hampshire Sunday News. From 1948 to 1961, he worked at The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine, serving at various times as a Washington, D.C., bureau reporter and correspondent in Paris. As a reporter in the 1950s, Bradlee became close friends with Senator John F. Kennedy and later covered the 1960 presidential campaign between Kennedy and Nixon. Bradlee has written two books on Kennedy, “That Special Grace” (1964) and “Conversations with Kennedy” (1975). Bradlee’s autobiography, “A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures” (1995), became a New York Times bestseller.
Bradlee, 84, is a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities and recently taught a course on dishonesty at Georgetown University. In a 2003 interview with journalist David Rowan, Bradlee said, “I’ve become very interested in lying, the kind of lying that melds with spin so the truth gets lost in the swamp. I don’t ever believe the first version of anything I’m told.”
In his lecture, titled “Lying and Other Challenges,” Bradlee will address leadership as it relates to politics and current events, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing the nation’s leaders.
Tickets for the lecture are $12 or free for those with valid identification. Tickets may be purchased at the McCrary Theatre box office at (336) 278-5610. The box office is open from 12:30 p.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday.
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