WMU Home > About WMU > WMU News

WMU News

NPR Iraq correspondent will speak at WMU

Jan. 29, 2008

KALAMAZOO--Deborah Amos, foreign correspondent for National Public Radio and ABC News, will give a public lecture at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 5, in Shaw Theatre at Western Michigan University.

Admission is $5 for the general public and free to students and faculty of WMU and Davenport and Kalamazoo colleges. A valid ID from one of the three schools is required.

An award-winning correspondent who covers Iraq for NPR News, Amos will speak on the U.S. conflict in Iraq in her presentation, "Iraq: No Exit in Sight."

Her visit to Kalamazoo is part of the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan's Great Decisions Foreign Policy Lecture Series and is sponsored by the World Affairs Council, WMU's Haenicke Institute for Global Education and Kalamazoo College.

Deborah Amos

Amos covers Iraq for NPR News, and her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning "Morning Edition," "All Things Considered" and "Weekend Edition." She has returned to work with NPR after a decade in television news, including ABC's "Nightline" and "World News Tonight" and the PBS programs "NOW with Bill Moyers" and "Frontline."

Prior to her work with ABC News, Amos spent 16 years with NPR, where she was most recently the London bureau chief. Previously she was based in Amman, Jordan, as an NPR foreign correspondent.

She has won several awards, including an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and a Breakthru Award, and widespread recognition for her coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. She spent 1991-92 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and she is the author of "Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World," published in 1992.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Amos joined NPR in 1977, where she was first a director and then a producer for "Weekend All Things Considered" until 1979, after which she worked on documentaries until 1985. In 1982, she received the Prix Italia, the Ohio State Award, and a duPont-Columbia Award for "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown;" and in 1984 she received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for "Refugees."

Amos began her career after receiving a degree in broadcasting from the University of Florida at Gainesville.

Great Decisions Foreign Policy Lecture Series

Amos' visit is the first of three programs in Kalamazoo sponsored by the World Affairs Council. Later this month there will be panel discussions on Russia's future and global philanthropy.

Feb. 19--"Putin's Long Shadow: Russia's Future," a panel discussion in the Fetzer Center's Kirsch Auditorium

Feb. 26--"Philanthropy: Does This New Global Player have the Power to Make a Global Difference?" a panel discussion in Stetson Chapel at Kalamazoo College

For more information, contact the World Affairs Council's Dixie Anderson at world@iserv.net or (616) 776-1721.

Media contact: Thom Myers, (269) 387-8400, thom.myers@wmich.edu

WMU News
Office of University Relations
Western Michigan University
1903 W Michigan Ave
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5433 USA
(269) 387-8400
www.wmich.edu/wmu/news