The Huntington Cinema Arts Centre hosted 2x Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Nicholas Kristof Friday night in promotion of his new memoir Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life. Mr. Kristof was interviewed by Northport based author and journalist Liza N. Burby in front of a sold-out audience in one of the CAC’s three theaters. Tickets included a copy of his new memoir as well as a book-signing at the end of the event.
During the hour-long interview, Mr.Kristof expounded on several anecdotes from Chasing Hope, such as the provincial rickshaw drivers who’d dodged gunfire to collect the dead and wounded in the midst of the Tiananmen Square massacre, an elderly Polish nun who’d negotiated with warlords for the safety of orphaned children in Darfur, and a Pakistani girl who used settlement money to build the first school in her village, even enrolling the children of her now-incarcerated attackers.
Throughout the evening, and despite recounting first-hand accounts of the most profound brutality he’s borne witness to in his 40 year, globe-trotting career in “solutions journalism,” Mr. Kristof conveyed a deep and (importantly) apolitical sense of morality and justice with a keen sense of humor, a sincere and unaffected love of humanity, and an earnest, almost Buddhistic lack of cynicism and sense of hope.
After the interview, the floor was opened for questions. It was clear that if anyone had come with a political axe to grind, Mr. Kristof successfully disarmed the room with an admirable level of candor, a precise and unclouded moral compass, and a genuine sense of duty to his fellow man. It was a timely and refreshing message and an enlightening glimpse into the spirit of one of our more consistently uncompromising advocates of Democracy, freedom, and human rights.
Scott M. Cohn is a freelance journalist and author based in Huntington.
