“It’s a really good instinct … [to have] a sense of humility in approaching complex issues that we may not fully understand,” journalist Nicholas Kristof said.
Kristof, currently an op-ed columnist at The New York Times and a regular contributor at CNN, shared his approach to reporting on the Middle East which aims to strike a fine balance in the fundamental contradictions inherent to being a foreign correspondent.
“Being willing to unflinchingly proclaim your moral views [is critical],” he said, “while recognizing that later, you may actually think differently.”
On Feb. 20, Kristof discussed the future of the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the Sudanese civil war, the question of what effective campus activism looks like and the future of the American left.
Kristof is a well-known journalist, political commentator and recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He is also the author of several books, most recently “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.” He spoke to a packed audience at Pomona College’s Rose Hills Theater, with people even sitting on the floor of the room. The talk was organized by Haverim Claremont, led by Leo Kalb Bourke PO ’25.
Kalb Bourke said that Kristof’s experience reporting in both Israel and Palestine over the decades has been a valuable perspective on the current state of the conflict, particularly because of his humanitarian approach to reporting.
”I think he will be able to share with us his experience … of representing the Israeli and Palestinian perspective,” Kalb Bourke said. “But also in terms of ensuring that we are able to understand the complexity of the situation … and the human tragedy of it.”
Kristof shared his view on the current state of democracy in Israel. He believes that there are two Israels: Israel proper, which has an imperfect, robust democracy, and the West Bank, where Palestinians lack fundamental human rights.
“But civil society in Israel is truly robust and impressive. And then there is the other Israel that has been often brutally repressive,” Kristof said. “Especially in the West Bank and more recently in Gaza, where Palestinians certainly don’t have anything remotely equivalent in human rights, and that is compounded now by the talk of annexation of the West Bank.”
The “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” as Kristof referred to it, has caused a humanitarian crisis in which people in Gaza have limited access to food, water and electricity, and nearly 47,000 Gazans have been killed. Former President Joe Biden announced a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on Jan. 19, 2025.
Kristof also spoke about the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan, emphasizing the lack of international attention to the crisis due to double standards and the United State’s lack of political capital to have an impact on the conflict.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been facing a civil war between two rival factions of the military government, leading to mass murder and a refugee crisis, while simultaneously leaving Sudan on the verge of famine.
“One reason for the double standard is that our tax dollars as Americans are not going to fund the weapons that are massacring the Sudanese,” Kristof said. “And our tax dollars are going to provide the 2000-pound bombs that are being dropped on Gaza.”
With regard to campus activism, Kristof believes that the protests were actually ineffective in helping resolve the conflict and humanitarian crisis on the ground in Gaza. In comparison, Kristof said that protests during the Vietnam War were less militant and helped to elect former President Richard Nixon.
“I was afraid that the militancy of the protests … was actually undermining the support and distracting from what was happening in Gaza … I do think that some kinds of protests that are less militant [and] more inclined to actually educate can be helpful,” Kristof said.
Kristof argued that there often tends to be a limited and binary view of compassion determined by “concentric circles of empathy,” and that it is necessary to rethink this view of human rights.
“At the end of the day, if you care about human rights only for Palestinians … or only for Jewish Israelis, you don’t care about human rights,” Kristof said. “You only care about one side.”
“Kristof claimed that the failures of the American left come from an excessive focus on values and terminology instead of outcomes, which can feel performative and feed a sense of exclusion.”
Attendee and Claremont local John Watts appreciated Kristof’s attention toward these “gray areas.”
“I felt he was exceptionally articulate, but I think he understood the nuances of some of these problems,” Watts said. “I appreciated the fact that he was working in those gray areas.”
Kristof claimed that the failures of the American left come from an excessive focus on values and terminology instead of outcomes, which can feel performative and feed a sense of exclusion.
“We often have this kind of purity, where we are so focused on our inputs that we don’t actually look at outcomes … We were trying to be inclusive, give pronouns and use terminology like pregnant people, etc,” Kristof said. “For a lot of Americans who do not live by words, this was excluding them.”
Referencing his childhood in Yamhill, Oregon, a small agricultural town, Kristof described the disenfranchisement of everyday life in the present state of economic and social distress.
“We have to recognize how much pain there is around the country,” Kristof said. “So many homes have been shattered by these interrelated pathologies of addiction and alcoholism and homelessness and mental illness and chronic pain and educational failure.”
Attendee Andrew Shelton PO ’27 echoed Watts’ view.
“[There were] some excellent points that were leveled and reasoned, and [the talk] contains some of the nuance that is highly necessary at this tumultuous time,” Shelton said. “I believe that Mr. Kristof was able to navigate the perils of such a divisive issue without disrupting the validity of his claims.”
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