LAWRENCE — Bob Woodward, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and associate editor for the Washington Post, will be interviewed by Dole Institute of Politics Director Bill Lacy for the 2011 Dole Lecture. The event is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 15, at the Dole Institute.
“With his fall 2010 book on President Obama’s prosecution of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as our recent intervention in Libya, the timing is ideal,” said Lacy. “When I accepted this job, Bob was kind enough to call and congratulate me and offer to be of help. So it was natural to ask him to do one of our signature programs here.”
Woodward interviewed Lacy extensively over a period of a few months for his book “The Choice,” about the 1996 presidential campaign between President Bill Clinton and Sen. Bob Dole.
The 2011 Dole Lecture is free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis. Doors open at 1:45 p.m. A book sale will follow the lecture.
Since 1971, Woodward has worked for the Washington Post, where he is currently an associate editor. He and Carl Bernstein were the main reporters on the Watergate scandal for which the Post won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Woodward was the lead reporter for the Post’s articles on the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that won the National Affairs Pulitzer Prize in 2002. In 2004, Bob Schieffer of CBS News said, “Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time.”
In the past 36 years, Woodward has authored or coauthored 16 books, all of which have been national nonfiction bestsellers. Twelve have been No. 1 national bestsellers — more than any contemporary nonfiction author. His latest, “Obama’s Wars,” was published Sept. 27.
Woodward was born March 26, 1943, in Illinois. He graduated from Yale University in 1965 and served five years as a communications officer in the U.S. Navy before beginning his journalism career in Maryland at the Montgomery County Sentinel, where he was a reporter for one year before joining the Washington Post.
Woodward has spoken at KU before. In 2000, he gave the annual William Allen White Day address and received the William Allen White Foundation’s National Citation from KU’s journalism school.
The Dole Lecture is hosted annually to commemorate the courageous recovery of Sen. Bob Dole after he was gravely wounded during a World War II battle on April 14, 1945, in Italy. Previous Dole Lectures have been given by President Bill Clinton; Sens. Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and Elizabeth Dole; Gen. Richard Myers; and journalist Tom Brokaw.