The Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies,
The Rabin Chair Forum, the Leadership, Ethics, and Practice Initiative, and
the School of Media and Public Affairs present:
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Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War
with
Marvin Kalb
in conversation with
Frank Sesno
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Tuesday, May 25, 2021
3:00-4:00 pm (EST)
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The chilliest years of the Cold War marked the entrance of a young man who would go on to become one of America's preeminent diplomatic correspondents. Handpicked by the legendary Edward R. Murrow to join the ranks of an esteemed news network, Marvin Kalb takes readers back to his first days as a journalist, and to the first days of broadcast news.
The world in the late 1950s was a tense geopolitical drama of Eisenhower's America, Khrushchev's Russia, and Mao's China. Mistrust and strategic calculation governed international relations. Kalb, who had left his graduate work in Russian studies at Harvard at Murrow's call, brought a scholar's appreciation for history and objective research to his new role as a journalist who explained and explored this new postwar world.
Kalb witnessed and interpreted many of the defining events of the Cold War. In Assignment Russia he ultimately finds himself assigned as Moscow correspondent for CBS news just as the U-2 incident is unfolding. Kalb brings alive the tension that surrounded that event, and the reportorial skills deployed to illuminate it.
Like The Year I Was Peter the Great, the first volume in a series of memoirs narrating his earlier life, Assignment Russia makes us eyewitnesses to history -- and demonstrates how Kalb, as a journalist, and writer, has helped shape the first draft of that history.
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"A nostalgic treat for older readers... a wake-up call for younger ones."
-- Edward Kosner, The Wall Street Journal
"'Well,' Khrushchev exclaimed, with what sounded like genuine surprise, 'it's Peter the Great!' -- remembering the nickname he had given me at the 1956 July Fourth embassy party in Moscow."
-- Marvin Kalb, Assignment Russia
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Marvin Kalb is a former senior adviser to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Harvard professor emeritus, former network news correspondent at NBC and CBS, and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kalb went on to become founding director of Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Kalb’s distinguished journalism career encompasses 30 years of award-winning reporting for CBS and NBC News as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Moscow bureau chief and anchor of "Meet the Press." He focuses on the impact of media on public policy and politics. He is also an expert in national security, with a focus on U.S. relations with Russia, Europe, and the Middle East. On December 16, 2020, the Silurians Press Club awarded Kalb the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of sixteen other books, including the first volume of his memoirs, The Year I Was Peter the Great (Brookings).
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Frank Sesno served as director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University for 11 years. He is now the Director of Strategic Initiatives. He is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and creator of Planet Forward, a user-driven web and television project that highlights innovations in sustainability. Sesno's diverse career spans more than three decades, including 21 years at CNN, where he served as White House correspondent, anchor and Washington Bureau Chief.
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This event is on the record and open to the media. |
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The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES)
Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
1957 E Street, NW / Suite 412 / Washington, DC 20052
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