Columnists Are Opinionated on Campus

If his first taste of journalism was any indication, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was well on his way to becoming one of the nation's leading political commentators on the Middle East.

In 1968, Friedman covered the visit of then then-Israeli Gen. Ariel Sharon to the University of Minnesota Hillel for his first article in his high school paper.

"Our paths have crossed many times," the Pulitzer Prize winner said.

Friedman joined his colleague, columnist Maureen Dowd, in front of a packed crowd at Zellerbach Hall on Friday for a discussion of "Being Opinionated in America," hosted by the Graduate School of Journalism and the Office of the Chancellor.

"I'm sure you, like me, agree with what they write, and sometimes most certainly do not and that's just how that should be," said Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. "But what matters most is that they make us think, make us question our own opinions and consider other viewpoints."

Dowd, who received the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1999, said the stigma attached to being a "polemicist" is why "there aren't many women columnists, and why teenage boys trash talk on the basketball court more than teenage girls."

Although a nonpartisan approach to columns leaves her without a natural constituency, it is a journalist's responsibility to keep tabs on the government, Dowd said.

Both did not hesitate to attack the Bush administration, which Friedman said "does not reach out to anyone that (he knows) that doesn't 100 percent share their view."

"This is not a war for (weapons of mass destruction). If there's a reason for war, it's for democracy," he said. "We are sponsoring the first horizontal dialogue in the history of the modern Arab world, this part of the world that has only been subject to vertical, top-down monologues."

Dowd, the author of "Bush World: Enter at Your Own Risk," said that the administration's conservative take defies the meaning of modernity.

"We are reeling backwards in science and not supporting stem cell research," she said. "The whole country is just being kind of yanked around by this politicized evangelical Christian right."

Friedman, taking a page from his book "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century," said the cuts in education are "flattening the world" economically and perpetuating the fall of the United States in the international community.

"You wouldn't want to be a B student in Berkeley, because now every genius in Bangalore and Beijing can now plug and play, compete, connect and collaborate more than ever before," he said. "So I believe that the flattening of the world presents an incredible opportunity of which I am enthused about, but an incredible challenge to us."

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