Power: Accountability and Abuse

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard is honored to host the capstone marquee event for The Pulitzer Prizes’ year-long Centennial Celebration in 2016.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, composers, authors, poets and playwrights will convene at Harvard in September to debate, discuss—and perform—the theme “Power: Accountability and Abuse.”

Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust will open the weekend on Sept. 10, 2016, with an introduction of Pulitzer Prize winner Wynton Marsalis. Marsalis will perform a musical meditation on “Blood on the Fields,” his epic narrative of one couple’s journey from slavery to freedom—the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer. 

The Marsalis event at Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre will be followed on Sept. 11, 2016, by a day-long program of Pulitzer winners engaged in conversation, storytelling and performances that highlight the work of those who give voice to the powerless and hold the powerful to account.

Among the many speakers, playwright Lynn Nottage will present a scene from her Pulitzer Prize-winning play ‘Ruined’ about a brothel keeper in the Democratic Republic of Congo; author Junot Díaz will read from his novel about a Dominican-American teenager coming of age in a multi-generational immigrant family; and legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward will be in conversation with Laura Poitras – who was part of a team that won a Pulitzer for stories revealing widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency –about journalism’s role in holding governments accountable.

The Nieman celebration will be the final of four signature events nationwide in 2016 honoring the Pulitzers’ Centennial. The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., will hold two days of events in late March highlighting Pulitzer Prize-winning works focused on the theme of “Civil Rights, Social Equality and Democracy.” In May, the Los Angeles Times will convene a symposium on “War, Migration and the Quest for Peace.” And in June, The Dallas Morning News and Texas’ three presidential libraries will host an event spotlighting “The People, the Presidency and the Press.”