NPR's Sylvia Poggioli to Receive Honorary Degree from Brandeis University

Waltham, MA -- Sylvia Poggioli, foreign correspondent for National Public Radio® (NPR®), will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Brandeis University at their 49th commencement on Sunday, May 21, 2000. Joining Poggioli as recipients of honorary degrees are George Mitchell, former U.S. Senate majority leader, Desmond Tutu, retired Anglican archbishop and Noble Peace Prize winner, and others. Tutu will give the keynote address at the ceremony.

"For nearly 20 years, Sylvia has been at the heart of NPR's foreign coverage," said Bruce Drake, acting vice-president of News and Information. "Her distinctive and distinguished reporting has helped put NPR on the map for many of our listeners."

Poggioli reports from Rome and other parts of Europe and the Middle East and can be heard on NPRŽ's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition® with Bob Edwards, All Things Considered® and Weekend Edition®. Since joining NPR®'s Foreign Desk in 1982, Poggioli's reporting has included noteworthy coverage of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, wars that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia and European reactions to events surrounding the Gulf War.

Her reports on the Bosnian conflict earned two awards in 1993, the George Foster Peabody Award and the Edward Weintal Journalism Prize. She also won the National Women's Political Caucus/Radcliffe College Exceptional Merit Media Award and the Silver Angel Excellence in the Media Award in 1994.

A 1968 graduate of Harvard College, Poggioli has a bachelor's degree in Romance languages and literature and later studied in Italy under a Fulbright Scholarship. In 1990 she spent an academic year as a research fellow at Harvard University's Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.

Renowned for its journalistic excellence and standard-setting news, information, and cultural programming, NPR serves a growing audience of nearly 15 million Americans each week via more than 625 public radio stations. NPR also distributes programming to listeners in Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa via NPR Worldwide^SM, to military installations overseas via American Forces Network and throughout Japan via cable.