February 11, 2000
RELEASE ON RECEIPT

Oberlin Lecture Series on the Challenges of National Security in the 21st Century Continues with Prize Winning Author Mark Bowden

Wednesday,
March 15, 2000

8:00 p.m.

Hallock Auditorium

Past and Future Speakers in the Series

OBERLIN, OHIO -- Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (Atlantic Monthly Press), is the next speaker in a new Oberlin lecture series dedicated to the challenges of national security in the 21st century. Bowden's free, public talk, "Humanitarian Blood," will address, he says, how the United States' and United Nations' "humanitarian mission in Somalia turned the region into a bloodbath."

He will also discuss his efforts to report and write about it in Black Hawk Down, his account of the Battle of Mogadishu that won for him the Hal Boyle Award, the top prize for foreign reporting from the Overseas Press club of America. A reviewer for The New York Times wrote that "a frightening immediacy characterizes [Bowden's] reconstruction of the bloody urban battle between American forces and Somali street fighters in Mogadishu in 1993."

A staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bowden has done extensive national and international reporting in addition to covering science, transportation, mental health issues and human behavior, and The Philadelphia Eagles. He was an assistant city editor in 1988.

Some of his articles at the Inquirer include: a four-part 1982 series on the threatened extinction of the black rhino; a magazine account of a fraternity rape incident at the University of Pennsylvania in 1983; a four-part series on police corruption in the summer of 1984; "Finder's Keepers," a 1985 account--later adapted into the 1993 motion picture Money for Nothing--of unemployed Philadelphia longshoreman Joey Coyle, who found a million dollars in the gutter; an extensive series of stories detailing Philadelphia police misconduct in 1996; and the 30-part account of the Battle of Mogadishu that resulted in Black Hawk Down. He is currently adapting that work into a feature film for Jerry Bruckheimer Productions. He also co-wrote a documentary film about the Battle of Mogadishu that aired on CNN last year.

Bowden has received numerous other honors and awards, including the 1990 Associated Press Sports Editors award for investigative reporting. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 1997 for "The Prince of Newtown Square," his account of the life of John du Pont, the multimillionaire heir and murderer. He has written two other books, Doctor Dealer (Warner Books) and Bringing the Heat (Knopf).

Oberlin's environmental studies program sponsors this lecture with the support of the Richard R. Hallock Foundation. Richard Reid Hallock '41, had a deep interest in issues of national security, and was an advisor to U. S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. Prior to his death, Hallock met frequently with David Orr, professor of environmental studies and politics, to discuss plans for a class and lecture series that would address the changing nature of security in the new century.

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Media Contact: Marci.Janas