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The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Commentary

Finalist: Trudy Rubin of Philadelphia Media Network

For eloquent commentary written in world hotspots from Molenbeek near Brussels to the chancelleries of Beijing, reminding Americans of the importance of the foreign beat during a year when their tendency was to turn inward.

Nominated Work

Biography

Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of The Inquirer’s editorial board. Her column appears twice weekly in The Inquirer and runs regularly in many other newspapers around the United States.

In 2001, Ms. Rubin was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary for her columns on Israel and the Palestinians. In 2008 she was awarded the Edward Weintal Award for International Reporting. In 2010 she won the Arthur Ross Award for international commentary from the American Academy of Diplomacy. She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq.

Ms. Rubin has special expertise on the Middle East and travels abroad frequently. In recent years, she has reported from Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, China, and Taiwan as well as from E.U. countries affected by terrorism and refugee flows.

Before coming to The Inquirer in December 1983, she was Middle East correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, covering Israel and the Arab world, and lived in Jerusalem and Beirut. Earlier, she was a national correspondent for The Monitor, covering election campaigns and national political and social issues. Prior to that she was a staff writer on American politics for The Economist of London.

In 1993, Ms. Rubin was a Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. In 1990 she was invited as an exchange journalist to the Moscow News in Moscow. She spent 1975-6 as a fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University as a participant in the program for senior diplomats started by Henry Kissinger. In 1974-5, she was an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow in Cairo and Beirut.

She holds a B.A. from Smith College and an MSc (Economics) from The London School of Economics. In 2007 she was awarded the Smith College Medal for Outstanding Alumnae.

Winners

Prize Winner in Commentary in 2017:

Peggy Noonan

For rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns. Commentary

Finalists

Nominated as finalists in Commentary in 2017:

Dahleen Glanton

For bold, clear columns by a writer who cast aside sacred cows and conventional wisdom to speak powerfully and passionately about politics and race in Chicago and beyond.

The Jury

Seth Lipsky(Chair)

Editor

Rick Christie

Editor of the Editorial Page

Laura Gunderson

Editorial and Commentary Editor

Ruben Navarrette, Jr.

Syndicated Columnist

Colleen McCain Nelson*

Vice President/Editorial Page Editor

Alana Newhouse

Editor

Dawn Turner

freelance journalist

Winners in Commentary

2016

Farah Stockman

For extensively reported columns that probe the legacy of busing in Boston and its effect on education in the city with a clear eye on ongoing racial contradictions.
2015

Lisa Falkenberg

For vividly-written, groundbreaking columns about grand jury abuses that led to a wrongful conviction and uncovered other egregious problems in the legal and immigration systems.
2014

Stephen Henderson

For his columns on the financial crisis facing his hometown, written with passion and a stirring sense of place, sparing no one in their critique.
2013

Bret Stephens

For his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist.
See All Commentary

2017 Prize Winners

Feature Writing

C. J. Chivers

For showing, through an artful accumulation of fact and detail, that a Marine’s postwar descent into violence reflected neither the actions of a simple criminal nor a stereotypical case of PTSD.
Commentary

Peggy Noonan

For rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.
Criticism

Hilton Als

For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race.
Editorial Writing

Art Cullen

For editorials fueled by tenacious reporting, impressive expertise and engaging writing that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa.
See All 2017 Winners