Jim Hoagland
Jim Hoagland was born in Rock Hill, SC in January, 1940. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1961 (and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa) and undertook a year’s graduate study at the University of Aix-en-Provence. After serving as a U.S. Air Force officer in Germany, Hoagland moved to Paris in 1964 to work for the International Edition of The New York Times, where he wrote about the lively jazz culture developing in the French capital. In 1966, he joined The Washington Post, where he would win two Pulitzer Prizes and other awards as a reporter, editor and syndicated columnist.
Covering the tumult of Washington during the apogee of the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests propelled Hoagland to his first assignment as a foreign correspondent.
Reporting from Nairobi, Hoagland won his first Pulitzer for his coverage of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa in 1971. Banned from that country for five years, he returned in 1976 to write another ground-breaking series that won the Overseas Press Club’s Bob Considine award.
Transferred to Beirut in 1972 to serve as Middle East correspondent, Hoagland covered the Arab-Israeli war, the invasion of Cyprus, the Kurdish revolt in Iraq, and Lebanon’s civil war. Beginning in 1975, he accepted positions as Paris bureau chief, then Foreign Editor, then Assistant Managing Editor of the Post. He began a syndicated column in 1986, concentrating on the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform efforts in the Soviet Union. He returned to a Washington base in 1990 and continued his column and in-depth interviews with world leaders.
He won his second Pulitzer in 1991 for his commentary about events leading up to the Gulf war and the failure of Gorbachev’s leadership. In 2002, the editors of The Times of London, Le Figaro, Die Welt, and other leading European newspapers headed a jury that awarded Hoagland a special Europa prize for contributing to U.S.-European understanding.
Author of South Africa: Civilizations in Conflict, Hoagland was made a chevalier of the Legion in 2006, and promoted to officer on June 24, 2006 at the French ambassador’s residence. He was an Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, 2010-2013. Since 2010, he has been a Contributing Editor at The Washington Post.
Covering the tumult of Washington during the apogee of the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests propelled Hoagland to his first assignment as a foreign correspondent.
Reporting from Nairobi, Hoagland won his first Pulitzer for his coverage of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa in 1971. Banned from that country for five years, he returned in 1976 to write another ground-breaking series that won the Overseas Press Club’s Bob Considine award.
Transferred to Beirut in 1972 to serve as Middle East correspondent, Hoagland covered the Arab-Israeli war, the invasion of Cyprus, the Kurdish revolt in Iraq, and Lebanon’s civil war. Beginning in 1975, he accepted positions as Paris bureau chief, then Foreign Editor, then Assistant Managing Editor of the Post. He began a syndicated column in 1986, concentrating on the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform efforts in the Soviet Union. He returned to a Washington base in 1990 and continued his column and in-depth interviews with world leaders.
He won his second Pulitzer in 1991 for his commentary about events leading up to the Gulf war and the failure of Gorbachev’s leadership. In 2002, the editors of The Times of London, Le Figaro, Die Welt, and other leading European newspapers headed a jury that awarded Hoagland a special Europa prize for contributing to U.S.-European understanding.
Author of South Africa: Civilizations in Conflict, Hoagland was made a chevalier of the Legion in 2006, and promoted to officer on June 24, 2006 at the French ambassador’s residence. He was an Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, 2010-2013. Since 2010, he has been a Contributing Editor at The Washington Post.
