KEVIN KLOSE
Doctor of Humane Letters

From “Morning Edition” to “Car Talk,” classical music and “The Capitol Steps” to Saturday morning’s “It’s Only a Game” and Saturday afternoon’s Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, listeners to North Country Public Radio (NCPR), formed at and proudly affiliated with St. Lawrence University, celebrate your decade of leadership at National Public Radio, of which NCPR is a founding member station. You have brought about marked growth in NPR’s service and prestige in the dynamic world of international journalism, including such strides as a successful partnership with the BBC for international reporting.

Radio pulses in your veins. Born in Toronto, Ontario, you grew up in Red Hook, New York, with parents who were radio producers and writers in the 1930s and 1940s.

Your career as a journalist includes several years with The Washington Post, successively as city editor, Moscow bureau chief, Midwest correspondent and deputy national editor.  You shifted to radio in 1992, as director of Radio Liberty and then president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a private, non-profit multi-national news organization.  Prior to joining NPR, you were director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, where you oversaw the U.S. government's non-military global news and television news services.  IBB includes Voice of America, Worldnet Television and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

You are the author of five books, including Russia and the Russians: Inside the Closed Society, which won the 1984 Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award for best nonfiction work on international affairs.  A Woodrow Wilson National Fellow, you are the founder of the Intermedia Survey Institute of Washington, a non-profit research firm that specializes in media and opinion survey in Eurasia; a board member of the Independent Sector and the Eurasia Foundation; and an advisory board member of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

In grateful recognition of for your commitment to an informed and involved global citizenry, St. Lawrence is proud to offer you the degree Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.