KINGSTON, R.I. -- August 25, 2003 -- Tina Rosenberg, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and member of The New York Times editorial board, will kick off the URI Honors Colloquium, "The Futures of Globalization," with a talk on Wednesday, Sept. 10.

Rosenberg’s lecture, "Rethinking Globalization: Making it Work for the World’s Poor," will be held in Edwards Auditorium on the Kingston Campus at 8 p.m.

The organizers of URI’s free public lecture series, Chai Kim, professor of business administration, Richard McIntyre, professor of economics, and John Grandin, professor of languages and director of the International Engineering Program, agree that the point of the colloquium is to highlight what they termed the "contested concept of globalization," noting that there are profound winners and losers in the current global marketplace.

During her career, Rosenberg has paid close attention to globalization and its effects on the poor.

Rosenberg has been an editorial writer at The New York Times since 1996, concentrating on foreign policy. She was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Before joining The Times, she was a freelance writer of books and magazine articles. Her 1994 book, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism, won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. She has lived for six years in Latin America and currently writes from Mexico City. She is also the author of Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America.

She was the first freelance journalist to receive a five-year MacArthur Fellowship "genius" award. Her writings have appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post,
The New Yorker, Harper's, and The New York Times Magazine. She formerly served as a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Archive, and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.

In the August 18, 2002 New York Times Magazine, Rosenberg wrote that what globalization has done or has failed to do is the "largest story of our times."

She continued: "Globalization is meant to signify integration and unity -- yet it has proved, in its way, to be no less polarizing than the cold-war divisions it has supplanted. The lines between globalization's supporters and its critics run not only between countries but also through them, as people struggle to come to terms with the defining economic force shaping the planet today. The two sides in the discussion -- a shouting match, really -- describe what seem to be two completely different forces. Is the globe being knit together by the Nikes and Microsofts and Citigroups in a dynamic new system that will eventually lift the have-nots of the world up from medieval misery? Or are ordinary people now victims of ruthless corporate domination, as the Nikes and Microsofts and Citigroups roll over the poor in nation after nation in search of new profits?"

She added that it is not too late for globalization to work. "But the system is in need of serious reform. More equitable rules would spread its benefits to the ordinary citizens of wealthy countries. They would also help to preserve globalization by giving the poor of the world a stake in the system -- and, not incidentally, improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people. "

Please visit www.uri.edu/hc for the most current colloquium information and a complete schedule of events and directions, or contact the URI Honors Center at 401-874-2381 or debg@uri.edu.

The program’s major sponsors are: URI Honors Program and President’s Office, The Providence Journal, Fidelity Investments, URI Foundation, URI College of Arts and Sciences and the URI College of Business Administration.

Other sponsors are URI’s Office of Student Affairs, Alumni Association, Multicultural Center and College of Pharmacy.