Christiane Amanpour, who ended her long tenure as an international correspondent for CNN to take over ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs program in August, will deliver the keynote speech on December 15th at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s fourth commencement ceremony.
In addition to serving as anchor for “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,” she provides international analysis on other ABC News programs and platforms and helps produce prime-time documentaries on international subjects.
Amanpour joined ABC on August 1, 2010 from CNN, where she was most recently the network’s Chief International Correspondent and anchor of “Amanpour,” a daily half-hour interview program. Her first major assignment for CNN in 1990 was covering the Gulf War. She has since reported from the world’s major hot spots including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Rwanda, the Balkans, and the U.S. during Hurricane Katrina.
After 9/11 she was the first international correspondent to secure interviews with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. She has interviewed other world leaders from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, including Iranian Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the presidents of Afghanistan, Sudan, and Syria, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Amanpour has received every major broadcast award, including an inaugural Television Academy Award, nine News and Documentary Emmys, four George Foster Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, three duPont-Columbia Awards, the Courage in Journalism Award, an Edward R. Murrow award, and nine honorary degrees. In October, 2010 she will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was also made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her “highly distinguished, innovative contribution” to the field of journalism. In 1998, the city of Sarajevo named her an honorary citizen for her coverage of the Bosnia war.
Amanpour was born in London and spent part of her childhood in Tehran, Iran. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor of arts in journalism.
The 2010 graduation will take place at TheTimesCenter in the New York Times building, followed by a reception at the CUNY J-School next door.