Lisa Ling, special correspondent for the National Geographic Channel and Oprah Winfrey Show, will lecture on “Opening Minds and Hearts to the Issues Surrounding Us” on Tuesday April 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Garrison Theater, Scripps College Performing Arts Center. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the Malott Commons Office at (909) 607-9372.
Ling’s lecture is part of the Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series, Voice and Vision, made possible through the generous bequest of Scripps alumna Alexa Fullerton Hampton ’42.
Since joining National Geographic in December 2002 as the first woman host of Explorer, Lisa Ling has covered the looting of antiquities in war-torn Iraq, investigated the increasingly deadly drug war in Colombia, examined the complex issues surrounding China’s one-child policy and journeyed to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in a high-tech submersible in search of gold treasure. During Explorer’s 2005 season, Ling explored the phenomenon of female suicide bombers in Chechnya and Israel’s occupied territories and the hidden and dangerous culture inside American prisons.
As special correspondent to the Oprah Winfrey Show, Ling has covered the Lord’s Resistance Army and the crisis of AIDS orphans in Uganda, bride burning in India, and gang-rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Ling is also known to millions of Americans as co-host of Barbara Walters’ daytime talk show, The View, from 1999 to 2002, when she shared no-holds-barred opinions on current events and everyday issues. She drew fire for her comments after the September 11 attacks, in which she said that Americans should think about why other people would want to attack them.
Ling has worked in television for 18 years. At age 16, the Northern California native hosted Scratch, a nationally syndicated teen magazine show. Ling became one of the youngest reporters for Channel One News, shown in middle and high schools across the country. By the age of 25, she was Channel One’s senior war correspondent, visiting violent hot spots around the globe. In the field, she hunted down cocaine processing labs, reported on refugee crises and shared tea with the Dalai Lama. Ling has reported from more than two dozen countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, Algeria, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Japan, India and Iran.
Ling’s hard work continues off camera: she serves as a contributing editor for USA Weekend, has produced eight documentaries for PBS, several of which have won awards, and recently co-authored a book titled Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood.