[Editors] Thomas Friedman to speak at MIT on May 16

Tue May 3 10:34:16 EDT 2005

Just wanted to drop everyone a line and invite you to this lecture by 
Thomas Friedman of The New York Times on Monday, May 16. Please 
invite people in your departments. The event is free and open to the 
entire MIT Community.

Hope to see you there!

Thanks!
Jon Paul Potts
MIT OCW Communications Manager

THREE-TIME PULITZER PRIZE WINNER THOMAS FRIEDMAN
TO SPEAK AT MIT ON MONDAY, MAY 16

New York Times Foreign Affairs Columnist and author to discuss globalization
and the digital revolution, will sign copies of his new book The World is Flat

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (April 28, 2005) - Pulitzer Prize-winning New York 
Times columnist and author Thomas L. Friedman will speak at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday, May 16, 2005. 
Friedman's lecture, "The World is Flat," is open to the public and 
will begin at 4 pm in Room 10-250 in the center of MIT's campus. 
Friedman's lecture will be immediately followed by a reception and 
signing of his new book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 
Twenty-First Century.

Friedman's speech will focus on the world as it stands today in the 
age of globalization, and the convergence of technology that has 
allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of 
the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an 
explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest 
nations and giving them a huge new stake in the success of 
globalization. And, Friedman will ask, with this "flattening" of the 
globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in place, has 
the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their 
political systems to adjust in a stable manner?

MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest will introduce Friedman in 
this lecture that is open to the general public. The reception and 
book signing will be held in MIT's Bush Room, Room 10-105. Copies of 
The World is Flat (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2005) will be 
available for purchase. This event is sponsored by the MIT 
OpenCourseWare project (online at http://ocw.mit.edu).

Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, for 
which he won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He also was 
awarded Pulitzer Prizes for international reporting in 1983 and 1988.

A world-renowned author and journalist, Friedman joined The New York 
Times in 1981 as a financial reporter specializing in OPEC and 
oil-related news and later served as the Chief Diplomatic, Chief 
White House, and International Economics Correspondents. He has 
traveled hundreds of thousands of miles reporting the Middle East 
conflict, the end of the Cold War, U.S. domestic politics and foreign 
policy, international economics, and the worldwide impact of the 
terrorist threat. His Foreign Affairs Column, which appears twice a 
week in The New York Times, is syndicated to 700 newspapers worldwide.

In addition to his new book, Friedman is also the author of From 
Beirut to Jerusalem, which won both the National Book and the 
Overseas Press Club Awards in 1989 and was on The New York Times 
"Bestseller List" for nearly 12 months. Beirut has been published in 
more than 20 languages, including Chinese and Japanese, and is now 
used as a basic textbook on the Middle East in many high schools and 
universities. Friedman also wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree, one 
of the best-selling business books of 1999, and the winner of the 
2000 Overseas Press Club Award for best non-fiction book on foreign 
policy. Lexus is now out in 27 languages. Longitudes and Attitudes: 
Exploring the World After September 11, issued in 2002, consists of 
columns Friedman published about September 11, as well as a diary of 
his private experiences and reflections during his reporting on the 
post-September world as he traveled from Afghanistan to Israel to 
Europe to Indonesia to Saudi Arabia.

Friedman graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis University with a 
degree in Mediterranean Studies and received a masters degree in 
Modern Middle East Studies from Oxford. He has served as a visiting 
professor at Harvard University and has been awarded honorary degrees 
from several U.S. universities. He lives in Bethesda, MD, with his 
wife, Ann, and their two daughters.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/editors/attachments/20050503/3abf3b83/attachment.htm
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Tom Friedman pic.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 253502 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/editors/attachments/20050503/3abf3b83/attachment.jpg