Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture

Veteran war correspondent and 2007 Nieman Fellow Dexter Filkins delivered the 30th annual Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture at the Nieman
Dexter Filkins
Foundation in February 2011. Each year, the Morris Lecture honors an American overseas correspondent or commentator on foreign affairs.

“Dexter has earned a place among the great war correspondents. He is a fearless observer who records action with honesty and compassion," said Bob Giles, Nieman Foundation curator. "He is a worthy successor to the many courageous journalists who have given this lecture through the years.” Filkins is a 2007 Nieman Fellow.

Filkins has covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for years. He worked as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times for a decade before joining The New Yorker in December 2010. He also served as New Delhi bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times for three years and reported for The Miami Herald.

In 2009, Filkins was part of a team of Times reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Additionally, he was a Pulitzer finalist in 2002 for his reports from Afghanistan and has received a number of other national journalism prizes for his work.

Filkins’ book, “The Forever War,” which chronicles his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, was published in September 2008. The book became a New York Times bestseller and won numerous awards.





Joe Alex Morris Jr.


The Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture honors the Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent who was killed while covering the Iranian Revolution in Tehran in February 1979. In the fall of 1981, Morris posthumously received the Nieman Fellows’ Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity. The lectureship in his name was created in 1981 by his family, Harvard classmates and friends.

Morris was a member of the Harvard class of 1949. He inherited an interest in international news from his father, who had served as foreign editor of United Press International and the New York Herald Tribune. After working as a local reporter at The Hartford Times and the Minneapolis Tribune, Joe Jr. worked at Newsweek and later the Los Angeles Times. He reported from the Middle East for 25 years