UC Berkeley Journalism - Program - Goldman Press & Foreign Affairs Forum

Overview

With generous support from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, we launched the Goldman Forum on the Press and Foreign Affairs in 2002.

The Goldman Forum has quickly become the town square of Berkeley and indeed of a big part of the Bay Area, where thousands of students, faculty and other citizens come together to hear and participate in a whole new series of events that filled Zellerbach Auditorium and smaller venues around the campus.

Al Gore discusses climate control with Orville Schell.
Photo by Peg Skorpinski

These high profile public events served the Goldman Forum's stated goal of fostering lively debate about how critical world issues are covered in the American press and how they can be covered more effectively. Most the events are also featured on the Journalism School website and are available in streaming video. Goldman Forum events are also webcast by the university and are permanently accessible.

In addition, The Goldman Forum brings an array of distinguished journalists and diplomats to the Graduate School of Journalism as Teaching Fellows. The program has also provided international reporting travel scholarships to worthy students, who produce an array of fascinating stories that are being aired on Frontline/World and published in top newspapers.

The Goldman Forum is directed by UC Berkeley Professor Mark Danner, who has written on politics and foreign policy, focusing onwar and conflict. He has covered Central America, Haiti, the Balkans, and Iraq, among many other stories. Danner is the author of The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War; The Road to Illegitimacy; and Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, as well as forthcoming books on the former Yugoslavia and Haiti.

Since 1990 Mark Danner has been a staff writer at The New Yorker and is a frequent contributor to New York Review of Books. Danner's work has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, Aperture, and many other newspapers and magazines. He has co-written and helped produce two hour-long documentaries for the ABC News program Peter Jennings Reporting, and his work has received, among other honors, a National Magazine Award, two Overseas Press Awards, and an Emmy. In 1999 Danner was named a MacArthur Fellow.

In 2005, the Goldman Forum hosted two signature events. New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman were the featured speakers at Zellerbach Hall in a conversation with Goldman Forum Director and professor Mark Danner and writer and professor Cynthia Gorney, on "Being Opinionated in America." Journalists Under Fire: Vietnam & Iraq featured award-winning photographers Catherine Leroy, David Lesson and Don McCullin and journalists Jonathan Schell and Mike Cerre, who shared their experiences in the field.

More about the program:

Major Public Events

Salon-style Goldman Dialogues

Goldman Journalist-in-Residence

Goldman Diplomat-in-Residence

Student Scholarships for International Reporting