"Beat the Devil" columnist Alexander Cockburn will present "Terror and Empire: The U.S. in the Middle East and the Third World," the second lecture in the Hamilton College globalization speakers series, on Monday, April 26, at 7 p.m., in the Hamilton Chapel.
Born and raised in Ireland, Cockburn has worked as a journalist in the U.S. since 1973. He has established a reputation as one of the foremost reporters and commentators of the Left, writing newspaper and magazine columns for the past decade on the American political scene, economics, the environment, labor issues and international policy. The author of a bi-weekly column for The Nation called "Beat the Devil," Cockburn also writes a syndicated newspaper column distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate that appears regularly in such papers as The Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Examiner, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Detroit Free Press. Cockburn graduated with honors from Oxford University in 1963. He now lives in Northern California and travels extensively.
In 1987, Cockburn authored a highly successful collection of essays, some autobiographical, titled Corruptions of Empire for which he was called "the most gifted polemicist now writing in English" by the Times Literary Supplement. Another reader of Cockburn's columns, Rep. Henry Gonzalez of Texas, referred to Cockburn as "one of the most perceptive and one of the most brilliant minds we have in America."
Cockburn also co-authored the acclaimed The Fate of the Forest, Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon. He has appeared on numerous national television programs, including interviews with Ted Koppel and Phil Donohue. He also lectures regularly on environmental issues and global politics.
As part of its Sophomore Globalization Seminars, Hamilton College is presenting a series of lectures on a variety of global issues presented by prominent academics and authors. Future speakers include: Loretta Napoleoni, The New Economy of Terror: Tracing The Dollars Behind the Terror Networks on April 30; Peter Singer, author of The President of Good and Evil -The Ethics of George W. Bush, on May 4; and Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the National Labor Committee in Support of Human and Worker Rights on May 5.
All programs are free and open to the public.
