'NY Times' columnist highlights human rights

In between trips to the Congo and Israel, New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof dropped by Penn last night.

Kristof, the keynote speaker for Moral Voices, focused his lecture primarily on the importance of educating and empowering women around the world.

Moral Voices funded by the Heyman-Merrin Family Foundation and sponsored by Hillel, seeks to raise awareness at Penn of social justice issues around the world. The group, which was new to Penn this fall, will have a different initiative each year. This year’s program focuses on human trafficking.

“Nicholas Kristof has devoted his career to a variety of issues but human trafficking in particular,” College sophomore and co-chair of the event Caroline Kassie said, regarding the speaker choice.

Kristof, who has reported from six different continents, began his talk with an anecdote about a girl he met in rural China. Although very bright, the girl had to drop out of elementary school because her parents could not afford to pay the annual $13 school fee, Kristof explained.

After writing an article about the girl, Kristof received donations from readers. The girl was able to go back to school, eventually went on to community college and later became an accountant. Her success spawned a cycle of development as she was able to help send future generations of girls to school, Kristof said.

He used this story to illustrate the importance of investing in girls’ education and to highlight what he considers to be this century’s central moral challenge: “The oppression of women and girls throughout the world.”

“In much of the world, if you don’t have enough food you feed your son and starve your daughter,” Kristof said.

Yet women and girls aren’t the problem but rather the solution, he explained, adding that women are many countries’ greatest under-utilized resource.

Kristof laid out four issues that he believed should be at the top of the agenda toward ending the oppression of women: human trafficking, child birth, microfinance and education.

For each one of these areas he gave examples of women who were able to overcome the problems they faced because of help they received.

He ended the speech by emphasizing the importance of finding something fulfilling to become involved in.

“You do see terrible things. But in these places that really test humanity there are other people who rise to the occasion,” Kristof said.

College freshman Anita Gade said. “[Kristof] didn’t make light of any issues and highlighted grave and moral inherent problems with society. He turned the table to the audience to tell us to get our feet wet and get involved.”

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