New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof has been to all 50 states and over 100 countries - and last night, he added another destination to his list when he spoke in Huntsman Hall.
His lecture, which covered both journalistic and moral topics, was received by a crowd that filled the auditorium and overflowed into an auxiliary room in Huntsman where students watched via live video feed.
Penn Provost Ron Daniels briefly introduced Kristof with a description of the journalist's numerous accomplishments - which include two Pulitzer Prizes for articles on China's Tiananmen Square and the genocide in Darfur in 1990 and 2006, respectively.
Kristof's lecture focused heavily on his work in Darfur, and he used his experiences there as a foundation for his two-pronged message for students: first, "travel in order to embed yourself in discomfort," and second, "find some cause larger than yourself and leap into it."
Kristof expounded on his advice with personal stories.
The audience was taken, first, to Cairo, Egypt, where Kristof traveled to learn Arabic. Students laughed as Kristof recounted his vivid memory of how his name, Nick, was tantamount to an obscenity in Arabic.
The laughter gave way to gasps as Kristof moved on to stories of Cambodia where he encountered flagrant sex-trafficking.
He described two young girls he met who had been taken against their will and sold into sexual slavery.
Wharton sophomore Chris Chomiak said Kristof's experiences "inspiring and hair-raising - he made me feel like I could be doing more."
Having set the stage for his descriptions of the genocide in Darfur, Kristof focused on the horrors of a devastated Sudan with a slide show depicting images of mutilated innocents and women who had been brutally raped and beaten.
College sophomore Daniel Santos said he was impressed by "the deep morality of a reporter whose interest in [his] stories went beyond making the front page."
Kristof routinely travels to areas of extreme violence where his own life is put in danger. His happiness in doing so, he said, is a derivative of being part of a cause greater than himself.
Though Kristof's cause of giving a voice to the voiceless may not be that of all Penn students, the award-winning writer urged them to use the advantages of money and education and channel them toward a greater cause than their own.
