Thomas Loren Friedman (; born July 20, 1953) is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues.
Early life and education
Friedman was born on July 20, 1953, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Margaret Blanche (née Phillips) and Harold Abe Friedman. Harold, who was vice president of a ball bearing company, United Bearing, died of a heart attack in 1973 when Tom was nineteen years old. Margaret, who served in the United States Navy during World War II and studied Home Economics at the University of Wisconsin, was a homemaker and a part-time bookkeeper. Margaret was also a Senior Life Master duplicate bridge player, and died in 2008. Friedman has two older sisters, Shelly and Jane.
From an early age, Friedman, whose father often took him to the golf course for a round after work, wanted to be a professional golfer. He played a lot of sports, and became serious about tennis and golf. He caddied at a local country club and in 1970 caddied for professional golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez when the US Open came to town.
Friedman is Jewish. He attended Hebrew school five days a week until his Bar Mitzvah, then St. Louis Park High School, where he wrote articles for his school's newspaper. He became enamored with Israel after a visit there in December 1968, and he spent all three of his high school summers living on Kibbutz HaHotrim, near Haifa. He has characterized his high school years as "one big celebration of Israel's victory in the Six-Day War."
Friedman studied at the University of Minnesota for two years, but later transferred to Brandeis University and graduated summa cum laude in 1975 with a degree in Mediterranean studies. Friedman also pursued Arabic studies at The American University in Cairo, where he graduated in 1974 from its Arabic language unit (ALU). Friedman later taught a class in economics at Brandeis in 2006, and was a commencement speaker there in 2007.
After graduating from Brandeis, he attended St Antony's College at the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar, earning an M.Phil. in Middle Eastern studies.
Journalism career
Friedman joined the London bureau of United Press International after completing his master's degree. He was dispatched a year later to Beirut, where he lived from June 1979 to May 1981 while covering the Lebanon Civil War. He was hired by The New York Times as a reporter in 1981 and re-dispatched to Beirut at the start of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. His coverage of the war, particularly the Sabra and Shatila massacre, won him the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (shared with Loren Jenkins of The Washington Post). Alongside David K. Shipler he also won the George Polk Award for foreign reporting.
In June 1984, Friedman was transferred to Jerusalem, where he served as the New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief until February 1988. That year he received a second Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, which cited his coverage of the First Palestinian Intifada. He wrote a book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, describing his experiences in the Middle East, which won the 1989 U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Friedman covered Secretary of State James Baker during the administration of President George H. W. Bush. Following the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, Friedman became the White House correspondent for the New York Times. In 1994, he began to write more about foreign policy and economics, and moved to the op-ed page of The New York Times the following year as a foreign affairs columnist. In 2002, Friedman won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his "clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat."
In February 2002, Friedman met Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and encouraged him to make a comprehensive attempt to end the Arab–Israeli conflict by normalizing Arab relations with Israel in exchange for the return of refugees alongside an end to the Israel territorial occupations. Abdullah proposed the Arab Peace Initiative at the Beirut Summit that March, which Friedman has since strongly supported.
Friedman received the 2004 Overseas Press Club Award for lifetime achievement and the same year was named to the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
In May 2011, The New York Times reported that President Barack Obama "has sounded out" Friedman concerning Middle East issues.