UPDATED: Nov. 6, 2010

 

Nicholas Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist, told a packed audience in Hendricks Chapel the best way to chip away at poverty, climate change and civil conflict across the world is to send girls to school.

‘This century, the cause of our times is going to be the discrimination of so many women and girls around the world,’ he said.

Kristof spoke in the chapel Tuesday night about educating women across the globe as part of the University Lecture series. His lecture, ‘Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,’ shared its title with the 2009 book he wrote with his wife, New York Times reporter Sheryl WuDunn.

A New York Times columnist since 2001, he has reported in more than 150 countries. Kristof has bought the freedom of sex slaves in Cambodia, ran from warlords trying to slaughter him in the Congo and has spoken with women left to be eaten by hyenas because of a pregnancy gone wrong. 

He said he realized the power of educating girls after he wrote an article about the brightest 14-year-old girl in a rural school in China who dropped out because her parents did not pay the $14 tuition. This prompted New York Times readers to send a slew of donations to fund the school.

The money allowed her to go back to school and eventually graduate high school, get an accounting degree, return to her home village and hire other women. 

‘So many girls who otherwise would have been working in the rice patties or looking after goats ended up getting a great education,’ starting a ‘virtuous spiral’ that brought women into the work force and broke the cycle of poverty in the village, he said. 

Kristof also criticized the troop surge in Afghanistan, saying education has proved effective in fighting Taliban presence. In any given area in Afghanistan, he said, the more girls in school, the less prevalent the Taliban is.  

‘I find it particularly frustrating that we can find $100 billion this year to finance American military activity in Afghanistan but not the far more modest sum of one-tenth of that amount,’ which would pay for primary school for every kid around the globe, he said.

Kristof said between 60 million and 120 million females have died around the globe — more than the total number of people who died in all 20th century genocides — because in some areas of India and Africa, families set aside food and health care for their sons first, leaving daughters sick and starving.

There’s ‘no political will to save them because they’re poor, rural and female,’ he said.

On a reporting trip years ago to Cambodia, Kristof saw teenagers kidnapped and locked up in brothels. They were not paid and ended up dying of AIDS.

‘It’s slavery,’ he said. With pressure from western governments, journalists and non-governmental organizations, Cambodia has tightened restrictions on brothels. One he once visited is now a grocery store. 

‘What we’re dealing with is not just tragedies but opportunities as well,’ Kristof said. ‘You can take people with squandered assets and turn them into productive useful assets for their families, communities, countries.’

He said the ‘dirty little secret of poverty’ is that families who live under the poverty line spend 2 percent of their budget on education. If women were given control over purse strings, he said, they could fix this by spending on behalf of children, he said. 

‘There are no quick fixes in development,’ he said, ‘but maybe the closest we have is education.’

Kristof also said college students are better at focusing on local solutions rather than broad, global ones compared to older generations. 

‘Young people today are better at figuring out ways of making a difference in a particular place,’ he said. ‘Sponsoring a third-grade class in a refugee camp could make a difference, though not on a global scale.’

Christen Brandt, a senior magazine journalism and English and textual studies major, is the executive director of She’s the First, an organization that pairs donors with schools in developing countries. 

‘Nick Kristof really is one of the leading advocates for women’s rights around the world and for She’s the First,’ she said, ‘so the opportunity to see him in person made me want to do a couple of back flips.’

abknox@syr.edu

Published on November 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm