2011 Carey McWilliams Award Winner

The Carey McWilliams Award is given each year to honor a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.

Award Committee: Shanto Iyengar, Chair, Stanford University; Lilian A. Barria, Eastern Illinois University; and Mahmood Mamdani, Columbia University

Recipient: Robert Fisk, The Independent

Citation: The recipient of the McWilliams Award Citation for 2011 is Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent for The Independent (London). Fisk received a PhD in Political Science from Trinity College, Dublin University. He is based in Beirut and, most recently, covered the unrest in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. He has covered every significant event in the Middle East since the early 1980s including the Algerian and Lebanese Civil Wars, the American hostage crisis, the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He is among a handful of Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden (on three different occasions).

Fisk is the author of numerous books, most recently, The Great War for Civilization (Vintage, 2007). He holds more international journalism awards than any other working foreign correspondent. In June 2011, he was named the winner of the International Prize at the prestigious Amalfi Coast Media Awards in Italy. In naming Mr. Fisk, the jury noted that his reporting epitomized "objectivity and a desire to bring the news, whatever the cost."