Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Best-Selling Authors of Half the Sky, at Adelphi University on February 1, 2010

Adelphi University is pleased to welcome Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, best-selling authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a thought-provoking and profoundly inspiring book that revealed the cruel reality faced by women who experience violence and oppression from around the world, such as sex trafficking and mass rape. The lecture will take place on Monday, February 1, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. in the Thomas Dixon Lovely Ballroom of the Ruth S. Harley University Center, 1 South Avenue, Garden City, NY. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the William E. Simon Lecture in American Civilization and Values Endowment.

Husband-and-wife team Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn call women’s rights the moral issue of the 21st century. New York Times columnist Kristof, and WuDunn, a former Times reporter, make a case for investing in the health and autonomy of women worldwide. More girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the 20th century. Half the Sky illuminates the stories of many women who have suffered excruciatingly under their society’s feudal attitudes toward women. Wu Dunn’s experiences trekking through Asia over the years, along with Kristof’s writing as an Op-Ed columnist for the Times, led the two of them to write Half the Sky about women in the developing world.

Kristof and WuDunn were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism. As longtime foreign correspondents for the New York Times, they won the prize for their coverage of the Tiananmen student movement in China and its bloody suppression. Kristof also won a second Pulitzer for his commentary on human rights issues, along with the Michael Kelly Award, the Online News Association Award, and the American Society of News Editors Award. He has also served as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo, and as associate managing editor. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first-class honors.

At the Times, WuDunn worked as a business editor and as a foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Beijing. She is the first Asian-American to win a Pulitzer. WuDunn, is now an investment adviser, with a focus on philanthropy. She graduated from Cornell University, and has master’s degrees from Harvard Business School and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

Kristof and WuDunn have also collaborated on such influential, milestone books as China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia.

The endowment of the William E. Simon Lecture in American Civilization and Values is indicative of Mr. Simon’s dedication to educational excellence and civic responsibility. The generous gift to Adelphi created a preeminent forum for world leaders who exemplify a commitment to the culture and beliefs that have shaped America.

For more information about this and other events on campus, please visit adelphi.edu, or call the Cultural Events Hotline at 516.877.4555.