Nicholas Kristof Will Give the Tom McCall Lecture at OSU

The former candidate for governor is back at the New York Times writing his column.

Kristof Ends Campaign To Become Oregon Governor Nicholas Kristof, former New York Times reporter and columnist, and two-time Pulitzer prize winner, next to his wife Sheryl WuDunn, announces on February 17, 2022, in Portland, Oregon, the end of his bid for the governorship of Oregon, after his residency status was denied today by the Oregon Supreme Court. © John Rudoff 2022 (John Rudoff/Photo Credit: ©John Rudoff 2022)
By Nigel Jaquiss

Nicholas Kristof isn’t where he wanted to be in 2023—but where he landed is a pretty nice consolation prize.

Kristof, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist who grew up in Yamhill, resigned from the Times in 2021 to seek the Democratic nomination for Oregon governor.

Although his candidacy attracted strong financial support from around the country, Kristof failed to make the ballot because, as WW first reported, he didn’t meet Oregon’s three-year residency requirement for candidates for governor. (Kristof voted in New York in 2020.)

But his candidacy was hardly for nothing. Kristof generated great material for his next book, and the Times welcomed him back last August. Now, Kristof will take to the stage for Oregon State University’s annual Tom McCall lecture. (Kristof and the nonaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson both regularly invoked the former GOP governor as a role model in their campaigns.)

Kristof, whose 2020 book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope (co-written with his wife and frequent collaborator, Sheryl WuDunn) addressed the decline of Oregon’s working class and the state’s urban-rural divide, will touch on those and related topics in a speech titled “How can we fix the problems all around us?”

Krisof will speak Monday, April 24, at OSU’s Learning Innovation Center, Room 100. The lecture is free and open to the public but requires registration.

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