Howard W. French Biography
Howard Waring French is an American journalist, author, and photographer who has taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism since 2008. Prior to returning to school, he worked as a foreign correspondent and senior writer for The New York Times.
Howard Waring French Age
Howard Waring French Family- Parents
Attempts to establish the identities of his family, his mother, and his father were in vain since no information about them is available to the public. It’s therefore not known whether he has any siblings.
Howard Waring French Wife
Howard is married to his wife Agnès French.
Howard Waring French Career
French worked as a university instructor in the Ivory Coast before becoming a reporter in the 1980s. He has written extensively about Western and Central African politics. These reports served as the foundation for the book A Continent to Take. French has also covered political and social matters in China, including the rise of civil society, the government crackdown on opposition during the Dongzhou protests in 2005, and the 2008 Sichuan disaster, among other topics. His most recent employment for The New York Times was in China, where he was the Shanghai bureau chief from 2003 to 2008.
French joined The New York Times in 1986 and served as its Caribbean and Central America bureau chief from 1990 to 1994, covering Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and a number of other nations. He was one of the first black correspondents for the publication. See Paul Farmer’s The Uses of Haiti (Common Courage Press, 1994) for a highly critical examination of French’s reporting and commentary on Haiti in the early 1990s. French covered West and Central Africa for the Times from 1994 to 1998, reporting on battles in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Central Africa, with a focus on the fall of Zaire’s longstanding dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. French was the Times’ Tokyo Bureau Chief from 1998 to 2003, covering Japan and the Koreas.
French speaks Mandarin, French, Spanish, and Japanese in addition to his native English. After a year studying Japanese at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa, he became the Times’ Tokyo bureau chief in 1999. He has frequently written for The New York Review of Books and has also contributed to The Atlantic, “The Guardian Longreads,” and numerous other publications. In addition to covering China as the Times’ Shanghai Bureau Chief, French was a weekly contributor for the International Herald Tribune on regional matters. French is the author of his sixth book, “Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War,” published by Norton/Liveright in 2021.
French is also a globally exhibited documentary photographer, with a multi-year project called “Disappearing Shanghai” that photographed Shanghai’s fast diminishing old quarters and has been presented in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, a book comprising this work, was produced in 2012 in partnership with novelist and poet Qiu Xiaolong. French serves on the board of the Columbia Journalism Review and is a recent past president of IRIN (now known as The New Humanitarian), a non-profit news organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. He contributes a weekly international affairs column to Foreign Policy.
Howard Waring French Honor- Awards
2022 Winner, MAAH Stone Book Award for Non-Fiction for Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War. 2022 Winner, Hurston Wright Award for Non-Fiction for Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War. 2016 Professor of the Year, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 2005 Finalist, Hurston Wright Award for Non-Fiction for A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa. 2004 Honorary Doctorate – University of Maryland, for commentary on East Asia
Howard Waring French Net Worth
French has an estimated net worth of 1 million dollars.