News Center

April 23, 2012 — The Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College will present a free public lecture by Stephen Collinson, a White House correspondent with the AFP news agency (Agence France-Presse), at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 26, in Quigley Hall auditorium. The title of Collinson’s talk is “The Opacity of Hope: The Enigmatic Politics of Barack Obama.”

Collinson recently returned from Korea, having reported on Obama’s trip there prior to the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit. This is Collinson’s fifth U.S. presidential election as a reporter. In 2008 he traveled regularly with the Obama, Clinton and McCain campaigns.

Collinson, who has reported from more than 50 countries, has also written about national races in India, Israel, Thailand, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Indonesia. He has also covered the U.S. State Department and Congress.

Before being assigned to Washington in 2000, he was a foreign correspondent in Asia and worked in radio in Switzerland. He began his career in newspapers in Scotland, having graduated from the University of Aberdeen with a master’s degree in English literature.

AFP, a global news wire service, traces its history back to 1835 with the creation of Agence Havas, the world’s first international news agency. AFP covers the world with a combined 5,000 stories a day in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Arabic.

For more information about Collinson’s talk, call the Center for Political Participation at 814-332-6202.