Pulitzer Winner, Author Thomas Friedman to Speak at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Thomas L. Friedman, internationally renowned author, reporter, and New York Times columnist, will visit The University of Alabama Feb. 22.

Friedman, the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and the author of five bestselling books, among them “From Beirut to Jerusalem,”  “The World Is Flat,” and “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” will speak at an evening presentation open to the public after meeting with UA students for a presentation and a question-and-answer session at the Ferguson Student Center in the afternoon.

The student presentation will be from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Ferguson Theater and will be titled “A Conversation with Thomas Friedman.”

The evening talk, which is open to the general public, will be at 7 p.m. in Sellers Auditorium, and the topic will be “Hot, Flat, and Crowded.”

In “The World is Flat,” Friedman examined the “flattening of the globe” and the impact of the globalization that has taken place over the past 20 years and the convergence of technology and events that have created an explosion of wealth in middle classes around the world.

In his latest book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded,” Friedman said everyone needs to accept that oil will never be cheap again and that wasteful, polluting technologies cannot be tolerated. The last big innovation in energy production, he observed, was nuclear power half a century ago.

Current efforts to find alternative energy sources are not only inadequate, Friedman said, they’re hopelessly haphazard and piecemeal. Friedman argued it’ll take a coordinated, top-to-bottom approach, from the White House to corporations to consumers.

Friedman said American leadership is the key to the healing of the earth, and it is the best strategy for the renewal of America.

Friedman’s visit is sponsored by a coalition of UA entities, including the Culverhouse College of Commerce & Business Administration, College of Arts & Sciences, College of Engineering, College of Continuing Studies, Office of Academic Affairs, Office of Research, Honors College, School of Social Work, Office of Student Affairs, Graduate School, University Libraries, the College of Education, and the College of Communication and Information Sciences.

Dr. Joe Benson, UA vice president for research, said the public event at Sellers Auditorium will require tickets which will be distributed online.

“We think a lot of people will be interested in hearing what Mr. Friedman has to say, so we want to make sure they have it on their calendars. The prudent approach is to require tickets, so we can make sure that everyone who attends is seated and comfortable,” Benson said.

Tickets for the evening event, “Hot, Flat, & Crowded with Thomas Friedman,” will be available Tuesday, Feb. 15th. There is no charge for the tickets that can be obtained through the website www.crimsonartstickets.com. Users will need to register before requesting tickets if they do not already have a Crimson Arts Tickets account. Each person can request up to two tickets.

Those who receive tickets must either print out their ticket or bring a digital copy (on their iPhone or similar device) so that the special barcode can be scanned at the entrance door to the event.  This barcode prevents ticket fraud, and attendees will not be admitted without their ticket. Tickets will go offline Feb. 17 or when availability has run out, whichever occurs first.

Friedman was born in Minneapolis in 1953, and he grew up in the middle-class suburb of St. Louis Park. In high school, he developed two passions that have defined his life: the Middle East and journalism. He visited Israel with his parents, a visit that stirred his interest in the Middle East. A high school journalism teacher inspired in him a love of reporting and newspapers.

After graduating from high school in 1971, Friedman attended the University of Minnesota and Brandeis University, and he graduated summa cum laude in 1975 with a degree in Mediterranean studies. In 1978, he received an M.Phil. Degree in modern Middle East studies from Oxford. That summer he joined the London Bureau of United Press International on Fleet Street, where he worked as a general assignment reporter.

Friedman spent almost a year reporting and editing in London before UPI dispatched him to Beirut as a correspondent in the spring of 1979. The Beirut assignment was his introduction to life as a foreign correspondent.

In May 1981, Friedman joined the staff of The New York Times in Manhattan. From May 1981 to April 1982, he worked as a general assignment financial reporter.

In April 1982, he was appointed Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times, a post he took up six weeks before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. For the next two-plus years, he covered the departure of the PLO from Beirut, the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilarefugee camps, and the suicide bombings of the U.S. embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut. He also covered the aftermath of the Hama massacre in Syria.For his work, he was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.

In June 1984, Friedman was transferred to Jerusalem, where he served as the Times’ Jerusalem Bureau Chief until February 1988. Friedman devoted much of his reporting on events in the West Bank and Gaza and was awarded a second Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and granted a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship to write a book about the Middle East.

The book was “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which was on The New York Times bestseller list for nearly a year and won the 1989 National Book Award for nonfiction and the 1989 Overseas Press Club Award for the best book on foreign policy.

In January 1989, Friedman began a new assignment as the Times’ chief diplomatic correspondent, based in Washington, D.C., covering Secretary of State James A. Baker III and the end of the Cold War.

In November 1992, he was appointed the Times’ chief White House correspondent. In that role he covered the post-election transition and the first year of the Clinton presidency.

In January 1995, Friedman took over the New York Times foreign affairs column. He has been the Times foreign affairs columnist since 1995.

Another book,” The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization,”published in 1999, won the Overseas Press Club Award for best book on foreign policy in 2000.

In April 2005, he published his fourth book, “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.” The book became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and received the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in November 2005.

Friedman’s most recent book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America,” was published in 2008 and became his fifth consecutive bestseller.  A 2.0 version was published in paperback in 2009.