Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Donabet Kristofis an American journalist, author, op-ed columnist, and a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He has written an op-ed column for The New York Times since November 2001, and The Washington Post says that he "rewrote opinion journalism" with his emphasis on human rights abuses and social injustices, such as human trafficking and the Darfur conflict. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has described Kristof as an "honorary African" for shining a spotlight on neglected conflicts...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth27 April 1959
CountryUnited States of America
Girls' education is no silver bullet. Iran and Saudi Arabia have both educated girls but refused to empower them, so both remain mired in the past. But when a country educates and unleashes women, those educated women often become force multipliers for good.
I took a gap year myself after high school and worked on a farm near Lyon, France. I stayed with the Vallet family, picked and packed fruit, and discovered that red wine can be a breakfast drink. That led to further travel as a university student.
There's something to be said for CEOs' entering politics: In theory, they have management expertise and financial savvy. Then again, it didn't work so well with Dick Cheney.
Conservatives highlight the primacy of family and argue that family breakdown exacerbates poverty, and they're right. Children raised by single parents are three times as likely to live in poverty as kids in two-parent homes.
Most of the time in America, we're surrounded by oppressive inequality such that the wealthiest 1 percent collectively own substantially more than the bottom 90 percent. One escape from that is America's wild places.
Ben Affleck exec-produced a documentary for HBO called 'Reporter' about my 2007 win-a-trip journey. I take the trip each year partly to encourage young people to think about global humanitarian issues: I think blogs by a student may be more compelling for that audience than my own work.
Our public figures are often narcissists, utterly self-absorbed in their quest for power.
I've always been interested in public health approaches because it seems to me we have this yearning for silver bullets, and that is not in fact how change comes about. Change comes through silver buckshot - a lot of little things that achieve results. That's a classic public health approach.
The Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine, is in northwestern India near the Pakistani border, and it is a delightful place to contemplate the draw of faith.
In America, we have subsidized private jets, big banks and hedge fund managers. Wouldn't it make more sense to subsidize kids?
The great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition.
One death is a tragedy, and a million deaths are a statistic.
Sex and gender are such befuddling mysteries even for those of us who are in the mainstream that you'd think we'd be wary of being judgmental. Yet much of society clings to a view that gender is completely binary, when, in fact, there's overwhelming evidence of a continuum.
Purely altruistic behavior is pretty much impossible because of the selfish pleasures we derive from it.