Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and a member of The Inquirer’s editorial board. Her column runs in many other U.S. newspapers.
In 2019, Ms. Rubin received the Overseas Press Club of America’s Flora Lewis Award for Best Commentary in international affairs. In 2017, and 2001, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. In 2010 she received the Arthur Ross Award for distinguished analysis of foreign affairs from the American Academy of Diplomacy. In 2008 she was awarded the Edward Weintal Prize for international reporting.
She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq. Ms. Rubin has special expertise on the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia.
In recent years, she has written from Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank, Turkey, France, Italy, Britain and Germany.
Since 2019, Ms. Rubin has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, an international affairs center.
Before coming to The Inquirer in December 1983, she was the Middle East correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, covering Israel and the Arab world. Earlier, she was a national correspondent for The Monitor, covering election campaigns and national political and social issues. Prior to that she was a staff writer on American politics for The Economist of London.
In 1993, Ms. Rubin was a Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. In 1990 she was an exchange journalist at the Moscow News in Moscow.
She spent 1975-76 as a fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University as a participant in the program for senior diplomats started by Henry Kissinger. In 1974-75, she was an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow in Cairo and Beirut.
She is a graduate of Smith College and The London School of Economics. In 2007, she was awarded the Smith College Medal for distinguished achievements by an alumna.
The topic of her presentation will be: "The foreign policy challenges confronting the United States as we approach November's elections."
This discussion will explore the key foreign policy challenges facing the United States as the nation approaches the upcoming November elections. Topics will likely include the U.S. approach towards Ukraine and Russia, as well as U.S. involvement in the Middle East; though given the fast pace of international news and Trudy's wide-ranging expertise, the precise focus will change with events.