Newhouse School of Communications

May 7, 2009

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author Seymour M. Hersh will deliver the keynote address at the 2009 Convocation Ceremony for Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. The ceremony will be held Saturday, May 9, at noon in the Carrier Dome.

Hersh first wrote for The New Yorker in 1971 and has been a regular contributor to the magazine since 1993. His journalism and publishing awards include the Pulitzer Prize, five George W. Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards and more than a dozen prizes for investigative reporting.

In 2004, Hersh exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces in The New Yorker. For that work, in 2005 he received the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club Award, the National Press Foundation's W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award and his fifth Polk Award, making him the award's most honored laureate.

Hersh was born in Chicago in 1937 and graduated in 1958 from the University of Chicago. He began his newspaper career as a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago. After serving in the U.S. Army, he worked for a suburban newspaper and then for United Press International and The Associated Press until 1967, when he joined the presidential campaign of Eugene J. McCarthy as speechwriter and press secretary.

In 1969, Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre and cover-up during the Vietnam War. His work earned him the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He joined The New York Times in 1972, working in Washington and New York. He left the paper in 1979 and has been a freelance writer since, with two six-month stints on special assignment to the Times' Washington bureau.

Hersh has published eight books, the most recent being "Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib" (HarperCollins, 2004), based on his reporting for The New Yorker. His book prizes include the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Award for biography, and a second Sidney Hillman Award, for "The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House" (Summit Books, 1983).

Hersh also won two Investigative Reporters & Editors prizes—one for "The Price of Power" in 1983, and the other for "The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (The Political, Diplomatic and Military Repercussions of Israel's Atomic Arsenal)" (Random House, 1991), a study of American foreign policy and the Israeli nuclear bomb program in 1992. In 2004, Hersh won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his pieces "Lunch with the Chairman," "Selective Intelligence" and "The Stovepipe."

All Newhouse graduating students, their families and friends are invited to attend the Convocation Ceremony. For more information, see http://newhouse.syr.edu/convocation.

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Media contact:
Wendy S. Loughlin
(315) 443-2785
wsloughl@syr.edu

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