Famed reporter Carl Bernstein to teach at Stony Brook
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Carl Bernstein will join the faculty at Stony Brook University as visiting presidential professor. Credit: handout
Journalist Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame will tackle a two-year project -- Stony Brook University, where he'll take on students who weren't even born when he exposed scandals, including the one that brought down a U.S. president.
Starting next month, the 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner and author will co-teach a course titled "Press and the Presidency," guest lecture on news literacy and speak in a series of free, public lectures. "I love speaking to young people," Bernstein said.
At the age of 69, Bernstein said in a brief interview that he wants to share personal experiences on issues he's passionate about, especially on the times that shaped the nation.
His courses will have seats reserved for students in other majors. Bernstein said this interdisciplinary approach attracted him to Stony Brook, which he lauded for "breaking the traditional academic mold."
"I've known for a while that I want to do more teaching, but I was determined not to be pigeonholed in a single academic department or discipline," Bernstein said in a news release.
"The idea was to develop an interdisciplinary agenda, focused on the history and politics and culture of America and its place in the world, from the 1950s to the present."
The professor-to-be will help raise money for the school.
Stony Brook University's president, Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., called Bernstein an "American icon."
"Coupled with his perspective as a great historian," Stanley said, "he brings to bear an incisive view of what is happening in the world today."
Bernstein, who lives in Manhattan and the Hamptons, never graduated from college, having dropped out from the University of Maryland.
But he was taught by the big stories of the day; a World War II baby who lived through the civil rights and Vietnam eras.
He and Bob Woodward were Washington Post reporters in 1972 when they exposed the Watergate office break-ins tied to President Richard M. Nixon, who resigned to avoid impeachment.
Since then, Bernstein has written about other abuses of power and about high-profile figures.
Updated now Newsday travel writer Scott Vogel took the ferry over to Block Island for a weekend of fun.
Updated now Newsday travel writer Scott Vogel took the ferry over to Block Island for a weekend of fun.
