Distributed April 18, 2003
For Immediate Release

News Service Contact: Mary Jo Curtis



Third annual lecture and awards

Thomas Friedman to give Casey Shearer Memorial Lecture May 1

New York Times columnist and award-winning author Thomas L. Friedman will deliver the third annual Casey Shearer Memorial Lecture Thursday, May 1, 2003, at 6:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching. The evening’s program, free and open to the public, will include presentation of the annual Casey Shearer Memorial Awards for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction.


PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Thomas L. Friedman, award-winning author and internationally known columnist for The New York Times, will deliver the third annual Casey Shearer Memorial Lecture Thursday, May 1, 2003, at 6:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, located on The College Green.

Friedman

The evening’s presentation is titled “A Conversation with Thomas L. Friedman.” The lecture, sponsored by Brown University and the Shearer/Goldway family, is free and open to the public; it was established to honor the memory of Casey Shearer ’00, a promising young writer and aspiring sportscaster who died days before he was to graduate from Brown.

Prior to Friedman’s address, the winners of the third annual Casey Shearer Memorial Award for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction will be announced. A first prize of $1,000, a second prize of $500 and honorable mentions will each be awarded to a full-time junior or senior at Brown; the awards were funded by Shearer’s family and friends.

Thomas L. Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman joined The New York Times in 1981 as a financial reporter specializing in OPEC and oil-related news. Since then he has also been the Times’ chief diplomatic, White House and international economics correspondent. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Friedman has traveled the world reporting on the Middle East conflict, the end of the Cold War, U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy, international economics and the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat. His foreign affairs column, which appears twice each week in the Times, is syndicated to 700 other newspapers worldwide.

Friedman is the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, which won both the National Book Award and the Overseas Press Club Award in 1989 and has since been published in more than 20 languages, including Chinese and Japanese. It is now used as a basic textbook on the Middle East in many high schools and universities. Friedman also wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree, one of the best-selling business books of 1999 and winner of the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy. His most recent book, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11, published in 2002, consists of columns Friedman published about September 11, as well as a diary he kept while reporting on the post-September 11 world and traveling to Afghanistan, Israel, Europe, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

Friedman graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis University with a degree in Mediterranean studies and received a master’s degree in modern Middle East studies from Oxford. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University and has been awarded several honorary degrees. He lives in Bethesda, Md., with his wife and two daughters.

Casey Shearer ’00

Casey Shearer ’00 was a vibrant, talented, and well-loved member of the Brown community. An economics concentrator, he also studied Spanish, political science and literature, and he was one of a group that revived Brown Student Radio (WBSR). He was best known on campus as the station’s play-by-play sports announcer and as the author of the weekly sports column “On the Case” in the College Hill Independent.

Born and raised in Santa Monica, Calif., where his mother, Ruth Goldway, had once been mayor, Shearer graduated from high school in Finland, where his father, Occidental College Professor Derek Shearer, served as the U.S. ambassador. A top student at Brown, he was a member of the economics honor society and received his magna cum laude pin the Friday before he was to graduate. That same day, during his regular pick-up basketball game at the athletic center, Shearer collapsed; he died four days later of an undetected heart virus. His memorial service in Sayles Hall later that week was attended by several hundred members of the Brown community, as well as family and friends, including former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

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