At a time when journalism is under attack from Trumpian charges of “lying press,” Lew Simons 50 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia demonstrate that without journalists who risk their lives, American democracy is in danger of shattering.

Pulitzer Prize winner Lewis M. Simons began his career as a foreign correspondent in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. He saw the war through to the end, covering the fall in quick succession of the three former Indochinese states. Since then, Simons has reported on war, civil unrest, politics and economics around the globe. He was a staff correspondent for The Washington Post, Time, the Associated Press and Knight-Ridder Newspapers. He is the author of Worth Dying For, co-author with Senator Christopher S. Bond of The Next Front, and a contributing author of half a dozen books on war and international affairs. A graduate of New York University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Simons was a member of the Marine Corps Reserve. He held the 2012-2013 Snedden Chair in Journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He and fellow journalist Carol Simons have three grown children and reside in Washington, DC.

Simons will be in conversation with David Sanger. Sanger is national security correspondent for the New York Times and bestselling author of The Inheritance and Confront and Conceal. He has been a member of three teams that won the Pulitzer Prize, including in 2017 for international reporting. A regular contributor to CNN, he also teaches national security policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.