Media Contact: Anne Middleton (858)534-2777 ;  Paul Cichocka 534-1465

Editor's Note: Image available

THOMAS FRIEDMAN, NEW YORK TIMES FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST AND PULITZER PRIZE WINNER, WILL SPEAK AT UCSD OCTOBER 27

Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner will deliver a free public lecture at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, October 27 at the University of California, San Diego's Mandeville Auditorium. In addition to presenting “Asian Economic Crisis: Lessons Learned,” Friedman will discuss his books, The Lexus and the Olive Tree and From Beirut to Jerusalem.

Books will be available for sale at Mandeville Auditorium, where Friedman will sign copies after the lecture. UCSD's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) is hosting the event, which is being underwritten by Irwin and Joan Jacobs and City National Bank.

“Tom Friedman's visit is extremely important to us, as he is the most insightful journalist writing on the issues that motivate our graduate students – globalization as the driving force in today's economy,” said IR/PS Dean C. Peter Timmer. “We in the greater San Diego-Baja California Region sit at the gateways to Asia and Latin America. Who better to discuss global political, economic and technology issues – and their effects on our area and the world – than the distinguished foreign affairs expert Tom Friedman?”

 The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, published in 1999, “is an effort to explain how this new era of globalization became the dominant international system at the end of the 20th century – replacing the Cold War system – and to examine how it now shapes virtually everyone's domestic politics and international relations," Friedman states on his web site at: http://www.lexusandtheolivetree.com/

From Beirut to Jerusalem, written during the period Friedman served as The Times' Israel Bureau Chief, was the winner of the 1989 National Book Award for non-fiction and the 1989 Overseas Press Club Award for the Best Book on Foreign Policy. This book has been published in 10 different languages, including Japanese and Chinese, and is now used as a basic textbook on the Middle East.

Early in his career, Friedman served as The Times' Beirut Bureau Chief, a post he took up six weeks before the Israeli invasion. In the early 1990s, he covered U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and the end of the Cold War. He later shifted to domestic politics and was appointed Chief White House correspondent for the Clinton Administration. In 1995, he became The Times' foreign affairs columnist.

For his coverage of the Middle East, Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel). Friedman graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in Mediterranean Studies and received a master's degree in Modern Middle East Studies from Oxford.