Christiane Amanpour
The Walter S. Gubelmann Memorial Lecture
Christiane Amanpour is CNN’s chief international anchor of the network’s award-winning, flagship global affairs program “Amanpour,” which airs weekdays at 1 p.m. EST on CNN International and nightly on PBS in the United States. She is host of “The Amanpour Hour,” a Saturday show of forensic interviews with the newsmakers, gamechangers and cultural icons shaping our world. She is based in the network’s London bureau.
Beginning in 1983 as an entry-level assistant on the international assignment desk at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, Christiane Amanpour rose through the organization becoming a reporter at the New York bureau and, later, the network’s leading international correspondent. In 1996, Newsweek stated that her reporting from conflict hotspots, in the Gulf and the Balkans, had helped make CNN “must-see TV for world leaders.”
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Christiane Amanpour was the first international correspondent to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. During the height of the Arab Spring she conducted an Emmy-winning interview, the last, with Libya’s former leader “Colonel” Moammar Gadhafi. She was the last journalist to interview Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak just before he was deposed.
The Walter S. Gubelmann Memorial Lecture
Walter S. Gubelmann was president of the Board of Trustees of The Society of the Four Arts for 22 years. Two memorials mark his contributions. First, funds were raised to establish the Walter S. Gubelmann Memorial Lecture each year, in honor of the former president’s many years as chairman of the lecture committee. Then, two years after his death in 1988, Silver King by sculptor D.H.S. Wehle was installed, in his honor, in the fountain at the entrance to the Esther B. O’Keeffe Building.