The Traveler

Issue date: 9/24/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Larry Ash The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristov illustrates the genocide in Darfur with slides and video during a speech Monday night in the Union Ballroom.

Nicholas Kristof survived his time in Darfur. His interpreter did not. When Kristof and his interpreter, a 19-year old local, were stopped at a military checkpoint, the interpreter was detained. The detainment would end five minutes later with a bullet being shot in the back of the young man's head, Kristof said.

"As a journalist, you are not supposed to bribe people," Kristof said. "When the life of your interpreter is at stake, you will offer any bribe you can."

Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, spoke Monday night at the Union Ballroom about the Darfur crisis and other causes in the Third World. He was invited to speak as part of the Cultures and Concepts series, said Matt Chavez, chairman of the Cultures and Concepts Committee. The university paid Kristof $25,000 to speak, Chavez said.

Kristof told the crowd to do two things: travel and find a cause bigger than themselves. Students should find an issue they care about now, because they may not have time later, he said. Young people should work to eliminate poverty, and the best ways to do so are improving health and education in the Third World, he said.

"If these things were near us, if they were happening to our neighbor, of course we would help," Kristof said.

As an example of such a cause, Kristof told the audience about his time reporting in Darfur, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. When he first came to Darfur, he found a camp of 30,000 people at an oasis, huddled underneath palm trees for shelter, Kristof said. He went from tree to tree asking families for their personal stories. One man told him he had been shot in the neck and left for dead in a pile of bodies. A woman said her parents were killed and then thrown into the village well to poison the water. A little girl and her baby sister had walked miles to reach the camp after rest of their family was killed. Another woman's children and husband were killed before she was gang raped with her sisters. That was just the first four trees, Kristof said.

"At that point, I could really see what happened," Kristof said. "Both the scale of the atrocities and the brutality hit home."

Continued...

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