Doctor of Humane Letters
Christiane Amanpour is a prominent broadcast journalist, renowned for more than two decades of reporting on crises in international “hotspots” such as the Persian Gulf, Israel, Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans,Afghanistan, Pakistan and posthurricane New Orleans, as well as for her interviews with world leaders. She is currently the global affairs anchor of ABC News and anchor of the interview program Amanpour on CNN International, where she is the network’s chief international correspondent.
Born in London to a British mother and an Iranian father, Amanpour re ceived her primary education in Iran and her secondary education in England.Witnessing the effects of the Iranian Revolution upon her family and friends, she has said, contributed to her interest in becoming a jour nalist and particularly a foreign correspondent. She got her start in radio and television while earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Rhode Island and graduated summa cum laude in 1983.
That year, Amanpour “arrived at CNN with my suitcase, with my bicycle and with about $100,” working first as an assistant on the international desk in Atlanta and then as a reporter in Eastern Europe during the fall of communism. She was promoted to foreign correspondent in 1989 and soon thereafter attracted widespread recognition for her coverage of the Persian Gulf War. She became CNN’s chief international correspondent in 1992, contributed indepth international reports to CBS’s 60 Minutes from 1996 to 2005 and has worked at ABC since 2010, anchoring its program This Week until early 2012.
Amanpour is a board member of the International Women’s Media Foun dation and a director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. She has gar nered, among other honors, multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards, a 2002 Edward R. Murrow Award, a 2011 Walter Cronkite Award, fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, honorary citizenship of Sarajevo (for her coverage of the Bosnian War) and a spot on Forbes magazine’s 2011 list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” Queen Elizabeth II named Amanpour a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2007.