Thomas Friedman | |
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.jpg) Friedman in 2005 | |
| Born | Thomas Loren Friedman (1953-07-20)July 20, 1953 (age 71) |
| Education | Brandeis University (BA) St Antony's College, Oxford (MPhil) |
| Occupation(s) | Author Columnist |
| Spouse | Ann Bucksbaum[1] |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Matthew Bucksbaum (father-in-law) |
| Website | www |
Thomas Loren Friedman (/ˈfriːdmən/FREED-mən; born July 20, 1953) is an Americanpolitical commentator and author. He is a three-timePulitzer Prize winner who is a weeklycolumnist forThe New York Times. He has written extensively onforeign affairs,global trade, theMiddle East,globalization, andenvironmental issues.
Friedman began his career as a reporter and won two Pulitzer Prizes in the 1980s for his coverage on conflict in Lebanon and politics in Israel, followed by a further prize in 2002 for commentary on thewar on terror.
Friedman was born on July 20, 1953, inMinneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Margaret and Harold Friedman.[2] Harold, who was vice president of aball bearing company, United Bearing, died of aheart attack in 1973 when Tom was nineteen years old. Margaret, who served in theUnited States Navy duringWorld War II and studiedHome Economics at theUniversity of Wisconsin, was ahomemaker and apart-timebookkeeper. Margaret was also a Silver Life Masterduplicate bridge player, who died in 2008. Friedman has two older sisters, Shelley and Jane. From an early age, Friedman, whose father often took him to thegolf course for a round after work, wanted to be a professional golfer. He played a lot of sports, and became serious abouttennis and golf. Hecaddied at a local country club and in 1970 caddied for professional golferChi Chi Rodriguez when theUS Opencame to town.[3]
Friedman isJewish.[4][5] He attendedHebrew school five days a week until hisBar Mitzvah,[6] thenSt. Louis Park High School, where he wrote articles for hisschool's newspaper.[7] He became enamored withIsrael after a visit there in December 1968, and he spent all three of his high school summers living onKibbutzHaHotrim, nearHaifa.[8] He has characterized his high school years as "one big celebration of Israel's victory in theSix-Day War."[8]
Friedman studied at theUniversity of Minnesota for two years, but latertransferred toBrandeis University and graduatedsumma cum laude in 1975 with a degree in Mediterranean studies. Friedman also pursued Arabic studies atThe American University in Cairo, where he graduated in 1974 from its Arabic language unit (ALU).[9] After graduating from Brandeis, he attendedSt Antony's College at theUniversity of Oxford as aMarshall Scholar, earning anM.Phil. inMiddle Eastern studies.
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Friedman joined the London bureau ofUnited Press International after completing his master's degree. He was dispatched a year later toBeirut, where he lived from June 1979 to May 1981 while covering theLebanon Civil War. He was hired byThe New York Times as a reporter in 1981 and re-dispatched to Beirut at the start of the1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. His coverage of the war, particularly theSabra and Shatila massacre,[10] won him thePulitzer Prize for International Reporting (shared with Loren Jenkins ofThe Washington Post).[11] AlongsideDavid K. Shipler, he also won theGeorge Polk Award for foreign reporting.[12]
In June 1984, Friedman was transferred toJerusalem, where he served as theNew York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief until February 1988. That year he received a second Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, which cited his coverage of theFirst Palestinian Intifada.[11] He wrote a book,From Beirut to Jerusalem, describing his experiences in the Middle East,[13] which won the 1989 U.S.National Book Award for Nonfiction.[14]
Friedman coveredSecretary of StateJames Baker during the administration of PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush. Following the election ofBill Clinton in 1992, Friedman became theWhite House correspondent for theNew York Times. In 1994, he began to write more aboutforeign policy andeconomics, and moved to theop-ed page ofThe New York Times the following year as a foreign affairs columnist. In 2002, Friedman won thePulitzer Prize for Commentary for his "clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat."[15]
In February 2002, Friedman metSaudiCrown Prince Abdullah and encouraged him to make a comprehensive attempt to end theArab–Israeli conflict by normalizing Arab relations with Israel in exchange for thereturn of refugees alongside an end to theIsrael territorial occupations. Abdullah proposed theArab Peace Initiative at theBeirut Summit that March, which Friedman has since strongly supported.[16]
Friedman received the 2004Overseas Press Club Award for lifetime achievement and the same year was named to theOrder of the British Empire byQueen Elizabeth II.[17][18] In May 2011,The New York Times reported that PresidentBarack Obama "has sounded out" Friedman concerning Middle East issues.[19]
| External videos | |
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 In Depth interview with Friedman, May 1, 2005,C-SPAN |
Friedman has been criticized for his staunch advocacy of theIraq War,[20] as well as unregulated trade,[21] and his early support of Saudi Royal PrinceMohammed bin Salman.[22]
Friedman has publicly expressed his support for the biometrics basedUnique Identification program ofIndia. When asked about the privacy concerns raised by the UID program in India he said:[23]
I am a huge enthusiast of the UID platform. I feel that is going to be a platform for innovation. Societies require these platforms where people are integrated with a trusted ID. I think concerns about privacy are bogus. The platform doesn't store anything about you except your biometrics. It's not tracking you. Facebook is tracking you much more today. If you are worried about privacy, then you shouldn't be using Google, Facebook, Twitter, any of these things. They are tracking you so much more than the Indian government is tracking you. What's worse is that they are selling it [information about you] for profit. So, I think the privacy concern [around Aadhaar] is bogus.
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Friedman first discussed his views onglobalization in the bookThe Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999). In 2004, visits toBangalore, India, andDalian, China, led Friedman to write a follow-up analysis,The World Is Flat (2005). Friedman believes that individual countries must sacrifice some degree of economic sovereignty to global institutions (such ascapital markets andmultinational corporations), a situation he has termed the "golden straitjacket".[24]
In 2000, Friedman championed Free Trade with The People's Republic of China, claiming that Free Trade would make China more democratic.[25] He has also expressed concern about the United States' lack ofenergy independence. He has stated, "First rule of oil—addicts never tell the truth to their pushers. We are the addicts, the oil producers are the pushers—we've never had an honest conversation with the Saudis."[26]
In 2007, Friedman viewedAmerican immigration laws as too restrictive and damaging to U.S. economic output: "It is pure idiocy that Congress will not open our borders—as wide as possible—to attract and keep the world's first-round intellectual draft choices in an age when everyone increasingly has the same innovation tools and the key differentiator is human talent."[27]
After visiting theSan Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego, California in early April 2019, Friedman wrote, "The whole day left me more certain than ever that we have a real immigration crisis and that the solution is a high wall with a big gate—but a smart gate."[28][29]
After theSeptember 11 attacks in 2001, Friedman's writing focused more on the threat ofterrorism and the Middle East. He was awarded the 2002Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat".[15] These columns were collected and published in the bookLongitudes and Attitudes.[citation needed] For a while, his reporting on post-9/11 topics led him to diverge from his prior interests in technological advances and globalization, until he began to researchThe World Is Flat.[30]
After the7/7 London bombings, Friedman called for theU.S. State Department to "shine a spotlight onhate speech wherever it appears", and to create a quarterly "War of Ideas Report, which would focus on those religious leaders and writers who are inciting violence against others".[31] Friedman said the governmental speech-monitoring should go beyond those who actually advocate violence, and include also those whom former State Department spokespersonJamie Rubin calls "excuse makers".[31] In his July 22 column, Friedman wrote against the "excuses" made by terrorists or apologists who blame their actions on third-party influences or pressures. "After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us ... why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed. When you live in an open society like London, where anyone with a grievance can publish an article, run for office or start a political movement, the notion that blowing up a busload of innocent civilians in response to Iraq is somehow "understandable" is outrageous. "It erases the distinction between legitimate dissent and terrorism" Mr. Rubin said, "and an open society needs to maintain a clear wall between them."[31] As part of their response to this column, the editors atFAIR encouraged their readers to contact Friedman and inform him that "opponents of the Iraq War do not deserve to be on a government blacklist-even if they oppose the war because they believe it encourages terrorism".[32]
During the1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Friedman wrote the following inThe New York Times on April 23, 1999: "Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want1389? We can do 1389 too." Friedman urged the US to destroy "in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, bridge [and] road", annex Albania and Macedonia as "U.S. protectorates", "occupy the Balkans for years", and "[g]ive war a chance."[33]
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) labeled Friedman's remarks "war-mongering" and "crude race-hatred and war-crime agitation".[34] Steve Chapman, critical of the response taken by NATO, referred to Friedman as "the most fervent supporter of the air war" and ironically asked in theChicago Tribune: "Why stop at 1389? Why not revive the idea, proposed but never adopted in Vietnam, of bombing the enemy all the way back to the Stone Age?"[35]Norman Solomon asserted in 2007 that "a tone of sadism could be discerned" in Friedman's article.[36]
Friedman supported the2003 invasion of Iraq, writing that the establishment of a democratic state in the Middle East would force other countries in the region to liberalize and modernize.[citation needed] In his February 9, 2003, column forThe Wall Street Journal, Friedman also pointed to the lack of compliance with theUnited Nations Security Council Resolution regardingIraq'sweapons of mass destruction:
The French position is utterly incoherent. The inspections have not worked yet, says Mr. de Villepin, because Saddam has not fully cooperated, and, therefore, we should triple the number of inspectors. But the inspections have failed not because of a shortage of inspectors. They have failed because of a shortage of compliance on Saddam's part, as the French know. The way you get that compliance out of a thug like Saddam is not by tripling the inspectors, but by tripling the threat that if he does not comply he will be faced with a U.N.-approved war.[37]
Nevertheless, he found the incoherence of the American position to be an asset, arguing that "the axis-of-evil idea isn't thought through -- but that's what I like about it. (...) There is a lot about the Bush team's foreign policy I don't like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we're going to get our turkey back.[38]
After the invasion, Friedman expressed alarm over the post-invasion conduct of the war by theGeorge W. Bush administration. Nevertheless, until his piece dated August 4, 2006 (see below), his columns remained hopeful to the possibility of a positive conclusion to the Iraq conflict (although his optimism appeared to steadily diminish as the conflict continued). Friedman chided George W. Bush and Tony Blair for "hyping" the evidence, and stated plainly that converting Iraq to democracy "would be a huge undertaking, though, and maybe impossible, given Iraq's fractious history". In January 2004, he participated in a forum onSlate called "Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War", in which he dismisses the justification for war based on Iraq's lack of compliance with the U.N. Resolutions:
The right reason for this war … was to oust Saddam's regime and partner with the Iraqi people to try to implement the Arab Human Development report's prescriptions in the heart of the Arab world. That report said the Arab world is falling off the globe because of a lack of freedom, women's empowerment, and modern education. The right reason for this war was to partner with Arab moderates in a long-term strategy of dehumiliation and redignification.[39]
In his September 29, 2005, column inThe New York Times, Friedman entertained the idea of supporting theKurds andShias in a civil war against theSunnis: "If they [the Sunnis] won't come around, we should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind."[40]
Critics of Friedman's position on the Iraq War have noted his recurrent assertion that "the next six months" will prove critical in determining the outcome of the conflict. A May 2006 study byFairness and Accuracy in Reporting cited 14 examples of Friedman's declaring the next "few months" or "six months" as a decisive or critical period, dating from in November 2003, describing it as "a long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer".[41] The bloggerAtrios coined the neologism "Friedman Unit" to refer to this unit of time in relation to Iraq, noting its use as a supposedly critical window of opportunity.[42][43]
In a live television interview aired June 11, 2006, onCNN,Howard Kurtz asked Friedman about the concept: "Now, I want to understand how a columnist's mind works when you take positions, because you were chided recently for writing several times in different occasions 'the next six months are crucial in Iraq.'" Friedman responded: "The fact is that the outcome there is unclear, and I reflected that in my column. And I will continue to reflect."[44] Responding to prodding fromStephen Colbert, Friedman said in 2007: "We've run out of six months. It's really time to set a deadline."[45]
Iran's Great Weakness May Be Its Oil, by Thomas Friedman, challenges and debates conflicts about oil. Friedman states,"The best tool we have for curbing Iran's influence is not containment or engagement, but getting the price of oil down in the long term withconservation and an alternative-energy strategy. Let's exploitIran's oil addiction by ending ours".[46] InHot, Flat, and Crowded, he says that "any car company that gets taxpayer money must demonstrate a plan for transforming every vehicle in its fleet to ahybrid-electric engine withflex-fuel capability, so its entire fleet can also run on next generationcellulosic ethanol".[47]
In a Fresh Dialogues interview, Friedman described his motivations for writing the book: "My concern is about America.... Demand for clean energy, clean fuel andenergy efficiency is clearly going to explode; it's going to be the next great global industry. I know that as sure as I know that I'm sitting here atDe Anza College talking to you. By being big in the next big thing, we'll be seen by the rest of the world as working on the most important problem in the world."[48] Some of Friedman's environmental critics question his support of still-undevelopedcoal pollution mitigation technology ("clean coal") and coal mining as emblematic of Friedman's less than "green" commitment to renewable energy.[49]
Friedman has been criticized by organizations such asFairness and Accuracy in Reporting for defending Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon as a form of "educating" Israel's opponents; according to FAIR, Friedman was explicitly endorsing terrorism by Israel against Lebanese and Palestinians.[50] JournalistGlenn Greenwald and professorNoam Chomsky also accused Friedman of endorsing and encouraging terrorism by Israeli forces.[51][52]
Political reporter Belen Fernandez heavily critiques Friedman's commentary regarding Israel. Among other criticisms, Fernandez singles out Friedman's suggestion that Israeli forces were unaware that their alliedLebanese militias carried out theSabra and Shatila massacre while under their guard, contradicting the assessments of other journalists and observers; his encouragement of strong-armed force by the Israeli army against Palestinians; and his opposition tosettlements only on the grounds that they are counter-productive, rather than because they violateinternational law or cause suffering for Palestinians. Fernandez suggests that Friedman is most worried about successfully maintaining Israel's Jewish ethnocracy and actively opposing a "one-man, one-vote" system of democracy.[53]
Friedman has also come under criticism from supporters of Israel. In an op-ed, Yitzhak Benhorin criticized Friedman's alleged suggestion that Israel relinquish territory it had occupied in the 1967 Middle Eastern War.[54] Friedman sparked criticism for writing that congressional ovations for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were "bought and paid for by theIsrael lobby."[55] A letter from theAmerican Jewish Committee objected that "Public opinion polls consistently show a high level of American ... support for and identification with Israel. This indicates that the people's elected representatives are fully reflecting the will of the voters."[56] Friedman responded to criticism by writing: "In retrospect I probably should have used a more precise term like 'engineered' by the Israel lobby – a term that does not suggest grand conspiracy theories that I don't subscribe to."[57]
Friedman hailed the Trump-brokeredpeace agreement betweenIsrael and theUnited Arab Emirates as "exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a 'HUGE breakthrough.'"[58] In July 2023, as the Netanyahu’s government proposed new laws leading to judicial reform intended to limit the powers of Israel’sSupreme Court, Friedman wrote an opinion piece supporting the Biden government’s changing diplomatic approach toward Israel.[59] Following the outbreak of theGaza war, Friedman urged Israel against military over-reach and further settlement expansions, saying to do so otherwise would risk destabilizing the region and the US-Israel alliance.[60][61]
In September 2009, Friedman wrote an article praising China'sone-partyautocracy, saying that China's leaders are "boosting gasoline prices" and "overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power."[62] The article was in turn subject to critical analysis:Matt Lewis who wrote, "Friedman's apparent wish for a 'benign' dictator is utopian, inasmuch as it ignores Lord Acton's warning that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"[63] andWilliam Easterly who quotes Friedman's one-party autocracy assertions[64] as part of his academic paper in which he concluded that, "Formal theory and evidence provides little or no basis on which to believe the benevolent autocrat story" and that, "economists should retain their traditional skepticism for stories that have little good theory or empirics to support them."[65] However, in a July 2012 article in the NYT,[62] he also wrote that the current Chinese leadership has not used its surging economic growth to also introduce gradual political reform and that, "Corruption is as bad as ever, institutionalized transparency and rule of law remain weak and consensual politics nonexistent."[66] When asked if he had "China envy" during a Fresh Dialogues interview, Friedman replied, "You detect the envy of someone who wants his own government to act democratically with the same effectiveness that China can do autocratically."[67] Likewise, in a 2011 interview with theBBC Friedman says that he wants his children to live in a world where "there's a strong America counterbalancing a strong and thriving China, and not one where you have a strong and rising China and an America that is uncertain, weak and unable to project power economically and militarily it historically did."[68]
Friedman's work is popular in China. His bookThe World is Flat was a bestseller in the country, although criticism of China in the book was removed when it was published in the country.[69] A translated version of his article fromThe New York Times, "China Needs Its Own Dream", has been credited with popularizing the phrase "Chinese Dream" in China, a term that was later adopted as a slogan byXi Jinping.[69] Friedman, in the magazineForeign Policy, has attributed the phrase to Peggy Liu and her environmental NGO JUCCCE.[70]
In September 2020, Friedman told CNBC that "Trump is not the American president America deserves, in my opinion. But he definitely is the American president China deserved. We needed to have a president who was going to call the game with China. And Trump has done it, with I would say more grit and toughness than any of his predecessors. I give him credit for that."[71] In November the same year, Friedman observed that Xi Jinping had brought about "an end to four decades of steady integration of China’s economy with the West".[72]
As theIran nuclear deal agreement reached between Iran and a group of world powers (theP5+1). In Friedman's interview, he mentioned that "Our view of the Middle East is deeply colored by Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and they all have their own interest. 15 of the 19 hijackers on 911 were from Saudi Arabia, none from Iran! Iranians had a spontaneous demonstration to support Americans on 911." He added, "What strikes you most about Iran (vs. Saudi Arabia) is that Iran has real politics... A country of 85 million people, a great civilization, many educated men and women, if they want to get a bomb they will get it. They have demonstrated they could do it under the most severe sanctions... Show me where Iranians have acted reckless [like Saddam Hussein]. These are survivors."[73]
On February 2, 2024, Friedman penned a allegorical op-ed entitled, "Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom", in which he posited Iran as a metaphorical "parasitoid wasp" with proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria, as caterpillars. Friedman claimed "We [America] have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle", suggesting that America militarily destroy the entire Middle East to annihilate Iran and its allies. He concluded that he could "contemplate" the Middle East by watching Animal Planet.[74] The New Arab reported that it has been criticized for racism andorientalism.[75]
In the 2010s, Friedman wrote several columns supporting the politics ofradical centrism. In one he stated that, if the "radical center wants to be empowered, it can't just whine. It needs its owngrass-roots movement".[76] In another column Friedman promotedAmericans Elect, an organization trying to field a radical-centrist candidate for the2012 U.S. presidential election. That column decried "the two-party duopoly that has dominated American political life".[77] Friedman's radical-centrist columns received a considerable amount of criticism, particularly from liberals.[78]
Friedman's wife, Ann (née Bucksbaum) is a teacher and a native ofMarshalltown, Iowa.[79] A graduate ofStanford University and theLondon School of Economics,[80] she is the daughter of real estate developerMatthew Bucksbaum,[1] whom Friedman describes as his "best friend".[81][82] They were married in London on Thanksgiving Day 1978 and live in an 11,400-square-foot mansion inBethesda, Maryland.[83] They have two daughters, Orly (born 1985) and Natalie (born 1988).[80]
Friedman supportedHillary Clinton for President of the United States in the2016 election,[84] and supportedMichael Bloomberg in the2020 primaries.[85][86] He supportedJoe Biden in the2020 United States presidential election.[87] Friedman is on the board of directors forPlanet Word, a private museum dedicated to language based in Washington, D.C.[88]
Friedman has won threePulitzer Prizes:
Give New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman credit for his admission, rare among the national news media, that President Trump's immigration positions are logical, humane, and morally right.
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