Ocean County College is pleased to present, as part of its Blauvelt Speaker Series, Washington Post columnist and bestselling novelist David Ignatius on March 3 at 12:30 p.m. Ignatius will lead a virtual lunch hour discussion titled New World Disorder: Snapshots from a Journalist’s Notebook. Tickets are free; however, pre-registration is required. Visit https://www.grunincenter.org/event/virtual-lunch-david-ignatius/.

As a foreign affairs journalist for more than 40 years, Ignatius has had unique access to the highest levels of government, allowing him to help us make sense of the world. He has given his readers a rare look at the world rarely covered by the evening news and takes them inside the stories and issues that shape the world. His words have highlighted the threats to national security, cyber security and the spread of information. With his ability to explain and edify the most complex issues, Ignatius addresses the forces at play in an increasingly disrupted world and analyzes the implications of growing uncertainty and risk.

In this discussion, Ignatius draws from his long career in journalism to reflect on the current state of the world and shares his view on how we got to where we are and where we may be headed. With the growing distrust of governments and institutions worldwide, Ignatius makes a case for the increasing importance of fact-based reporting, especially as the changing nature of journalism and the overall spread of information is jeopardizing the truth.

For more than 15 years, Ignatius has published his twice-weekly column for The Washington Post. Appearing in scores of newspapers around the world, his column has won the Overseas Press Club Award, the Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center for Journalists. In 2019, Ignatius won a special George Polk award for his coverage, nine articles in all, of the killing of Post columnist and his colleague, Jamal Khashoggi.

Ignatius has turned his experiences with the CIA into 10 spy novels; his latest high-tech book, The Quantum Spy, is about the covert race to build the world’s first supercomputer. According to former CIA Director Leon Panetta, “David Ignatius may call it a novel, but for those of us who know the work of the intelligence community, this book is nothing less than a real-life insight into the ongoing battle for dominance in the digital world.”

His other bestsellers include The Director and Body of Lies, which Ridley Scott adapted into a feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.

A graduate of Harvard and Cambridge, Ignatius was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and the executive editor of the International Herald Tribune. He has published articles in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New Republic.

The Blauvelt Speaker Series is funded, in part, by the generosity of the late Bradford Thomas & Eleanor G. Blauvelt and The Wintrode Family Foundation.