Seduction a la francaise: Politics, Society and Discourse

May 20, 2008

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Elaine Sciolino, the former Paris Bureau Chief of the New York Times, discusses her experiences in France with Library President and noted Voltaire scholar Paul LeClerc. This event is in conjunction with the with 2008 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Elaine F. Sciolino is a New York Times foreign correspondent based in Paris, focusing on terrorism abroad. She previously served as that newspaper?s Paris bureau chief from 2002 through early 2008. Sciolino has reported for the New York Times since 1984, and has covered national security and cultural issues, including the Middle East, the United Nations, the CIA and the diplomatic corps. Her books include Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (2000), which won the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2001, and The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein?s Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis (1991).

Paul LeClerc is the President and Chief Executive Officer of The New York Public Library. The New York Public consists of 91 libraries, spread over 130 square miles of New York City, and serves a more varied set of constituencies and has the broadest mission of any library in the nation. He is the author or co-editor of five scholarly volumes on writers of the French Enlightenment and his contributions to French culture earned him the Order of the Academic Palms (Officier) in 1989 and the French Legion of Honor (Chevalier) in 1996. Dr. LeClerc has received honorary doctorates from Oxford University, the University of Paris III-La Nouvelle Sorbonne, and Brown University, among others, and he is currently a trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, and the National Book Foundation.