John Kifner ‘63

Senior correspondent, New York Times

Speaking to the Fall '06 Craft & Consciousness seminar on November 8.

Kifner also spoke to the Fall '05 seminar.

John Kifner became a metropolitan reporter with The New York Times in October 1988, after having served as bureau chief in Cairo since October 1985. He also continues to cover both national and foreign stories. In 2003, he covered the initial attacks of the war in Iraq with the Marines and in 2004 he covered the conflict from Falluja. Kifner also covered the first Gulf War with the 101st Airborne Division. In the past, he has covered wars and conflict in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia.

Since joining The New York Times in 1963, Kifner has been both a national and a foreign correspondent based in Chicago and then Boston. He became bureau chief in Beirut in October 1979. He was transferred to Warsaw in May 1982, and was reassigned to Beirut in May 1984.

While in the Middle East, Kifner covered the revolution in Iran in 1979 and that year, he won a George Polk Memorial Award for his reporting of the event. Throughout his career he has received numerous awards, including the 1998 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The award was won for the body of his work, for both foreign and domestic reporting. The Annenberg School for Communication, which administers the award, cited his ability to translate "complicated changes in the political, economic and cultural landscape for American readers." The award is given in honor of John Chancellor, the NBC television correspondent and anchor who died in 1996.

Kifner graduated from Williams College in 1963. He attended Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship in 1971 and 1972. He resides in New York.

From http://publicaffairs.missouristate.edu/conference/participants/default.asp?pid=65