Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof will headline a daylong celebration of the liberal arts and sciences on April 13 when Elon University installs its chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society during Convocation for Honors in Alumni Gym.
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 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., 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.
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.