Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof will headline a daylong celebration of the liberal arts and sciences on April 13, as Elon University installs its new chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Kristof is a Phi Beta Kappa member and best-selling author who has traveled to 140 countries during a distinguished career as a journalist. His address at the annual Honors Convocation is titled “A Call to Action: Encouraging Young People to Join the ‘World’s Fight’ and Take on a Cause Larger than Themselves.”
The convocation, scheduled for 3:30 p.m. in Alumni Gym of Koury Center, will also include installation ceremonies for Elon’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter, featuring Phi Beta Kappa Society President Fred H. Cate, Phi Beta Kappa Society Secretary John Churchill, and Don Wyatt, a Phi Beta Kappa Senate member who led the team visiting Elon during the application process. Admission is $12 or free with an Elon ID. Tickets will be available beginning March 16.
Following the convocation and chapter installation, there will be a reception for Elon Society members, Phi Beta Kappa members, students to be inducted into the society and their families, and other invited guests at the Lindner Hall patio. Elon’s inaugural Phi Beta Kappa student members will be formally inducted at a 7:30 p.m. ceremony in McKinnon Hall of the Moseley Center.
Elon’s new Phi Beta Kappa Commons will be dedicated earlier in the day at the university’s weekly College Coffee gathering.
Elon’s faculty received approval to establish a Phi Beta Kappa chapter on Oct. 2, 2009, at the Society’s 42nd Triennial Council in Austin, Texas. Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic society. About 10 percent of U.S. colleges and universities shelter Phi Beta Kappa chapters, and Elon becomes only the seventh institution in North Carolina to meet the high standards of excellence in the arts and sciences advocated by the Society. Typically, students chosen for Phi Beta Kappa membership rank among the top 10 percent of arts and sciences majors, and have demonstrated outstanding scholarship, leadership, multicultural awareness and foreign language proficiency.
Currently 57 Elon faculty and staff members are Phi Beta Kappa members. The new Eta Chapter is headed by Russell Gill, Elon’s Maude Sharpe Powell Professor of English and Distinguished University Professor; math professor Helen Walton serves as chapter secretary.
An advocate for the liberal arts, Kristof has also received two Pulitzer Prizes and built a reputation as an extraordinary thinker, human rights advocate, and astute chronicler of humanity. A seasoned journalist, he has traveled the major roads and minor byways of China, Africa, India, and South Asia, offering a compassionate glimpse into global health, poverty, and gender in the developing world.
Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to all 50 states, every Chinese province, and every main Japanese island. He is also one of the few Americans to visit Iran, Iraq and North Korea, the three nations termed the “axis of evil” by President George W. Bush. During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, wars, an Indonesian mob carrying heads on pikes and an African airplane crash.
Kristof is author of the best-selling book, “China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power,” and he joined his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sheryl WuDunn, in authoring “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” Kristof is also the subject of the upcoming documentary The Reporter.
Haunted by the Darfur genocide, Kristof has gone beyond reporting, crossing over into activism and hoping his dispatches will resonate with people. Giving voice to the voiceless, he believes, “you could tell the story of a place by writing about a tiny village as a sort of prism into the bigger issues the culture was facing.”
Kristof encourages students to find causes they care about and leap into action. He tells them that engaging in worthy causes will give meaning to their lives and allow them to make a powerful difference in the world.