May 2005

Howard W. French, Veteran New York Times Correspondent, Speaks at Tokyo Commencement

By Chip Cassano

	Howard W. French

Noted journalist and author Howard W. French gave the keynote address at UMUC’s commencement ceremony in Tokyo, Japan, April 23, 2005.

French, a senior writer for the New York Times, joined the paper in 1986 and has served as the Shanghai bureau chief since 2003 and as the Tokyo bureau chief for four years prior to that, covering Japan, Korea, and the Russian Far East. French’s expertise extends to the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Africa—his father ran rural clinics for the World Health Organization in Ivory Coast—and after graduating in 1979, French moved to Africa, where he first taught English and then began his journalism career, working as a freelance reporter in West Africa, publishing work in Africa News, the Washington Post, The Economist, African Business, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

French is the author, most recently, of the critically acclaimed A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), which offers a broad and nuanced view of a continent that is still a mystery to much of the developed world.

The book was cited as a nonfiction book of the year by the Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and others, and French was named a finalist for the 2004 Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage.

French’s work covering the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, the late dictator of Zaire, earned him a nomination for the Pulitzer prize and won him the Overseas Press Coverage Award for the best interpretation of foreign affairs. Six times he has received the Publisher’s Award from the New York Times, the newspaper’s highest award.

French speaks Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and French. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he currently lives with his wife and two sons in Shanghai, China.