Calling George W. Bush the “president with the unsettling demeanor of a boy king,” New York Times columnist Bob Herbert is as outspoken against “President Bush’s tragically misguided” war in Iraq as he is against American political apathy toward race issues and the erosion of basic rights. Herbert spoke Feb. 20, 2007, at the Student Life Center on the Vanderbilt University campus.
He is the author of Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream, a collection of his columns from 1995 to 2004 that show his conviction that America is going in the wrong direction. In a conversation at the John F. Kennedy Library in May 2005, Herbert said, “It is difficult for big changes to occur without leadership that is smart and energetic and committed to American ideals.”
Herbert joined The New York Times in June 1993. Prior to that he was a national correspondent for NBC and reported regularly on The Today Show and NBC Nightly News. A founding panelist of Sunday Edition, a weekly discussion program on WCBS-TV, Herbert was also the host of Hotline, a weekly hour-long issues program on WNYC-TV.
He has won numerous awards, including the Meyer Berger Award for coverage of New York City, the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for distinguished newspaper writing and the Peter Kihss award of the New York Society of The Silurians for distinguished contribution to American journalism.
The speech was part of the 2006-2007 Chancellor’s Lecture Series. The Chancellor’s Lecture Series serves to bring to Vanderbilt and the wider Nashville community intellectuals who are shaping the world today. For more information about the Chancellor’s Lecture Series, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/chancellor/cls.
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