Brandywine

Inquirer Foreign Affairs Columnist to speak at Commencement Dec. 16

Next month, nearly 100 graduates will receive their diplomas from Penn State Brandywine during a ceremony that will feature Trudy Rubin, foreign affairs columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, as keynote speaker at 10 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 16.

Rubin’s column for the Philadelphia Inquirer appears in 50 additional U.S. newspapers and she is a member of the Inquirer’s editorial board.

In 2001, Rubin was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her columns on Israel and the Palestinians; in 2008, she was awarded the Edward Weintal Award for International Reporting; and in 2010, she won the Arthur Ross prize for distinguished commentary on international affairs from the Institute of American Diplomacy. Rubin is the author of "Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq."

From 2009 to 2011, she made four lengthy trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Over the past seven years, Rubin visited Iraq 11 times, and has written from Iran, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, China and South Korea.

Before coming to the Inquirer in December 1983, she was Middle East correspondent and national correspondent, covering election campaigns and political and social issues, for the Christian Science Monitor. Prior to that, she was a staff writer in American politics for the Economist of London.

In 1990, Rubin was an exchange journalist at the Moscow News in Moscow, Russia. She has held fellowships at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and was an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow in Cairo, Egypt and Beirut, Lebanon.

Rubin holds a bachelor of arts degree from Smith College and an Msc. (Econ), the equivalent of a master’s degree, from The London School of Economics. In 2007, she was awarded the Smith College Medal for distinguished alumnae.

Last Updated November 23, 2011

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