CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Feb. 3, 2004) — Anthony Shadid, Islamic affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, will be the 23rd Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial lecturer at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Shadid, 35, is based in the Middle East. He will deliver the lecture on Thursday, March 11, in the Knight Center at Walter Lippmann House in Cambridge, Mass.
Prior to joining the Post, he worked for The Boston Globe covering diplomacy and the U.S. State Department. Since Sept. 11, 2001, his assignments have taken him to Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Europe, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel and the Palestinian territories. On March 31, 2002, while reporting from Ramallah near the headquarters of Palestinian President Yassar Arafat, Shadid was shot in the back of his right shoulder.
Before joining the Globe, he was the news editor of the Los Angeles bureau of the Associated Press. Shadid was a Middle East correspondent for the AP in Cairo from 1995 to 1999. The work ranged from day-to-day reporting on strife in the West Bank to interviews with the young fighters of the Taliban on the front in Afghanistan. From 1993 to 1994, Shadid worked as an editor on the AP International Desk in New York.
Shadid, an American of Lebanese descent, speaks and reads Arabic. This offers him insights not often available to most Western journalists working in the Middle East. A native of Oklahoma City, Okla., he studied Arabic at the University of Wisconsin and later as a recipient of a fellowship in 1991-1992 at the American University in Cairo. He gained additional understanding of the region through graduate work at Columbia University in New York in 1993-1994.
Last year Shadid received the George Polk Award for foreign reporting for a series of dispatches from the Middle East. In 1997 Shadid received an honorable mention from the Overseas Press Club in the area of best newspaper or wire service interpretation of foreign affairs for his work on a special report: “Islam’s Challenge.” The four-part series, published by the AP in December 1996, was the product of nine months of research and dozens of conversations with religious sheikhs, students, activists and politicians. The series formed the basis of his book, “Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats and the New Politics of Islam,” published by Westview Press in December 2000 and reissued in paperback in April 2002.
The Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture honors the foreign correspondent of the Los Angeles Times who was killed in February 1979 while covering the Iranian Revolution in Tehran. The lectureship was created in 1981 by family, Harvard classmates and friends and is awarded annually by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
The Nieman Foundation administers the nation’s oldest midcareer fellowship program for journalists. Each year 12 American and 12 international journalists come to Harvard University for a year of academic study. Since 1938, more than 1,000 American and international journalists have studied at Harvard as part of the fellowship program.
In addition to the fellowships and publishing the quarterly magazine Nieman Reports, the Nieman Foundation is also the home of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism and the Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project to encourage reporters and editors to monitor and hold accountable those who exert power in all aspects of public life.
PREVIOUS JOE ALEX MORRIS JR. MEMORIAL LECTURERS
2003: Chris Hedges, The New York Times
2002: Anne Garrels, National Public Radio
2001: Roger Cohen, The New York Times
2000: Jane Pelez, The New York Times
1999: Eason Jordan, CNN
1998: Michael Skoler, National Public Radio
1997: Ann Cooper, National Public Radio
1996: Thomas Friedman, The New York Times
1995: Jim Wooten, ABC News
1994: Deborah Amos, ABC News and National Public Radio
1993: R.W. Apple Jr., The New York Times
1992: Peter Arnett, CNN
1991: Leslie Gelb, The New York Times
1990: Jonathan Randal, The Washington Post
1989: Nicholas Daniloff, U.S. News & World Report
1988: Harrison Salisbury, The New York Times
1987: Stanley Karnow, King Features Syndicate columnist
1986: Peter Jennings, ABC News
1985: Jack Foisie, Los Angeles Times
1984: Eric Sevareid, CBS News
1983: Norman Kempster, Los Angeles Times
1982: Flora Lewis, The New York Times