Newsweek International editor and CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria, once named one of the 21 most important people of the 21st century, will deliver the fall Atkinson Lecture Friday, Oct. 16, at 5 p.m. in Smith Auditorium at Willamette University.
The topic of Zakaria’s lecture is “Globalism: A New World.” Global shifts of power throughout the last 500 years — the rise of the West, then the U.S., and finally Asia — have had vast consequences. Zakaria will address the impact of the more recent power shift in Asia on today’s society and future generations.
Zakaria oversees all of Newsweek’s editions abroad. He writes a regular column for Newsweek and Newsweek International, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The New Republic and the webzine Slate.
In 2008 Zakaria launched a weekly foreign affairs program for CNN Worldwide called “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” which features in-depth interviews with world leaders such as Barack Obama, Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice. He has served as an analyst for ABC News, a roundtable member on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and host of Foreign Exchange on PBS.
Zakaria came to Newsweek in 2000 from Foreign Affairs, the widely circulated journal of international politics and economics, where he was managing editor. Prior to joining Foreign Affairs, he ran a major research project on American foreign policy at Harvard University, where he taught international relations and political philosophy.
Zakaria is author of From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role, which has been translated into several languages, and co-editor of The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World. His recent book, The Post-American World, explores the rise of China, India, Brazil and other countries as the great story of our time. Published in 2008, it became an immediate New York Times bestseller. He also wrote The Future of Freedom (2003), a global analysis of how democracy has changed every aspect of our lives — from economics and technology to politics and social relations. The book was an international bestseller and has been translated into about 20 languages.
In 1999 Zakaria was named “one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century” by Esquire Magazine. He has won two Overseas Press Club Awards with Newsweek reporting teams and has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards. He won the Deadline Club Award for Best Columnist and numerous honors for his October 2001 Newsweek cover story, “Why They Hate Us,” which the Boston Globe said “ought to be mandatory reading in every home in America.”
Zakaria’s lecture coincides with the dedication of Ford Hall, which is Willamette’s new high-tech, “green” academic building, and the conclusion of the $125 million Campaign for Willamette, the most ambitious development campaign in Willamette’s history. More than 15,000 donors have participated to-date.
