November 09, 2004

Bowling Green, Ky. - Ozier Muhammad, an award-winning New York Times photographer who was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, will share his photographs and experiences Nov. 18 at Western Kentucky University.

"Through the Lens: A Photojournalist's Account of the War in Iraq" is the topic of Muhammad's lecture at 7:30 p.m. in Van Meter Auditorium. His visit is sponsored by The New York Times and the American Democracy Project.

Muhammad, a native of Chicago, graduated in 1972 from Columbia College in Chicago with a bachelor"s degree in photojournalism. He also has worked as a photojournalist for Ebony Magazine, The Charlotte Observer and Newsday and has covered stories in Africa since 1974.

In 1985, he shared the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting with Josh Friedman and Dennis Bell of Newsday for "Africa, The desperate Continent," a series of reports about drought and famine and its political consequences. He also won the Polk award in news photography.

Muhammad covered the first non-racial election in South Africa, in which Nelson Mandela became president, the presidential election in Nigeria in 1999, and an alleged al Qaeda training camp in central Somalia in 2001. He was in Afghanistan just after the fall of the Taliban and a year later was embedded with the Marines during the war in Iraq.

His work appears in two books: "One Hundred Jobs: A Panorama of Work in the American City" and "American Jihad: Islam after Malcolm X." Muhammad will be available in Van Meter lobby at 7 p.m. Nov. 18 for book signings.

For more on his visit, click on http://www.wku.edu/teaching/engagement/speaker.html

For more information, contact Nancy Givens at (270) 745-6508. More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.