Public Speaking

I speak on a wide range of topics, including international affairs, world history, and the state of journalism. I am a professor at Columbia Journalism School and the author of six critically acclaimed books. I also write a weekly column for Foreign Policy and frequently contribute to the New York Review of Books. Both my writing and speaking draw from my decades of experience as an award winning New York Times foreign correspondent reporting from four continents. I’ve appeared as a keynote or featured speaker at dozens of universities in the US and overseas, at major book festivals in North America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, as well as before private and civic groups, museums and other venues. My book writing has thus far centered on the history and politics of two different parts of the world, Africa and East Asia, with a special focus on China. One of my books, “China’s Second Continent”, has brought these two areas of expertise together, examining China’s fast-changing relationship with the African continent. My latest book is The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide.(Norton, 2025). It looks at the overlooked profound connections between Africa’s fight for liberation and the American civil rights movement. At the center of this story is Kwame Nkrumah, who peacefully led Ghana into independence from Britain and widely inspired not only his fellow Africans but also Americans including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X,Maya Angelou and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture).