Kati Marton, one of the world's foremost journalists and wife of U.S. Special Envoy Richard C. Holbrooke, will speak on campus Thursday, April 22, for the President's Lecture Series.
Marton, with invited guest Holbrooke, will present The Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Lecture at 8 p.m. in the Mills Godwin Jr. Building Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public. (Due to the conflict in Yugoslavia, Holbrooke may be unable to attend the lecture.)
Marton has a unique perspective on international affairs, having spent two decades writing and reporting from the United States, Europe and the Far East. She was a reporter for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., assisted with the development of NPR's "All Things Considered" and hosted NPR's "America and the World."
As the Bonn, Germany, bureau chief and foreign correspondent for ABC News, Marton covered Leonid Breznev's visit to West Germany, the Bonn Economic Summit, two Vatican elections and numerous terrorist incidents.
Marton has contributed to many news organizations and publications, such as PBS, The New Yorker, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and The New Republic.
An advocate of journalists' rights and freedoms, she is the director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that monitors abuses against the press and promotes press freedom. She was awarded the Gannett Fellowship, a Peabody award, the Marc H. Tanenbaum Foundation for the Advancement of Interreligious Understanding Media Bridge-Builder Award and the Kyriazis Foundation award for the promotion of press freedom.
Marton has published four books, including "An American Woman," "The Polk Conspiracy - Murder and Coverup in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk" and "A Death in Jerusalem - The Assassination by Extremists of the First Middle East Peacemaker." Her book "Wallenberg: Missing Hero" is a gripping biography of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swede who saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews from Adolf Hitler's concentration camps, then disappeared. Marton is currently working on a book about presidential marriages, from Woodrow and Edith Wilson to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Holbrooke, the architect of the Bosnian peace accords and former assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian Affairs under President Clinton, is currently serving as U.S. Special Envoy to Yugoslavia and has had a leading role in NATO peace talks with President Slobodan Milosevic. His book, "To End a War," offers an inside account of the Clinton administration's foreign policy conflicts and how the Bosnian war was brought to an end under American leadership.
Prior to becoming President Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State in 1994, Holbrooke was U.S. Ambassador to Germany and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under President Carter. It was during this tenure that the United States established full diplomatic relations with China. Holbrooke is the only person ever to hold assistant secretary of state posts in two regions.
Holbrooke began his career in 1962 as a foreign service officer. After studying Vietnamese, he served in a variety of posts, including a White House position on the Vietnam staff of President Johnson. In the following years, his government career also included service as Peace Corps director in Morocco and participation in several key presidential committees on foreign policy.
In 1972, he took leave from foreign service to become managing editor of the quarterly magazine Foreign Policy, a position he held until 1976. During part of that time, Holbrooke was also contributing editor of Newsweek. He has published countless articles and columns, and was co-author of Clark Clifford's best selling memoir, "Counsel to the President."
