Ithaca College

Renowned author and journalist Seymour Hersh will be visiting Ithaca College on March 24 and 25 as the Park Distinguished Speaker for the 2004-2005 academic year.

The public lecture will take place as originally scheduled; the "town hall" Q&A is rescheduled.

Hersh will participate in a "town hall" question-and-answer session on Friday, March 25, at 9:00 a.m. in Park Auditorium. This session, originally scheduled for Thursday afternoon, is open exclusively to Ithaca College faculty, students, and staff.

Public Lecture Thursday, March 24, at 7:30 p.m. in Ford Hall Auditorium, Hersh will present a public lecture entitled "Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," based on his recent reports in The New Yorker magazine and his book on the subject. A reception and book signing will follow the lecture. Books will be available for sale.

Seymour Hersh is one of America's premier investigative journalists. He has reported some of the most important news stories of our time, including his 1970 Pulitzer prize-winning stories on the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. Hersh has published eight books, which have earned him the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times award for biography, and a second Sidney Hillman award, for The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. Hersh has also won two Investigative Reporters and Editors prizes, for the Kissinger book, in 1983, and in 1992 for a study of American foreign policy and the Israeli nuclear bomb program, The Samson Option. In 2004, Hersh won a National Magazine Award for public interest for his three pieces, "Lunch with the Chairman," "Selective Intelligence," and "The Stovepipe."

Seymour Hersh first wrote for The New Yorker in 1971 and has been a regular contributor to the magazine since 1993. His journalism and publishing prizes include the Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, the National Magazine Award, and more than a dozen other prizes (Sigma Delta Chi, Worth Bingham, Sidney Hillman, etc.) for investigative reporting on My Lai, the CIA's bombing of Cambodia, Henry Kissinger's wiretapping, and the CIA's efforts against Chile's Salvador Allende. In the 1980's Hersh revealed the CIA's illicit sale of U.S. weapons to Libya; the drug-running, vote-stealing, and other criminal activities of Panama's General Noriega; the CIA's complicity with South Africa's spying on the African National Congress; the deceit and incompetence of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada; and the growth of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.