THOMASVILLE, Ga. — Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow David K. Shipler, an author and former correspondent for the New York Times, will come to Thomas University for an intensive visit Feb. 19-23.

Shipler will conduct classes, seminars, workshops and lectures on the topics of U.S. race relations, foreign policy in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, poverty and Vietnam.

He will also meet with students and faculty members informally throughout the week.

 “Mr. Shipler will be a perfect fit for Thomas University,” said Dr. John Meis, TU’s Vice President for Academic Affairs. “Our students will have a chance to meet a world-class journalist, helping to create better understanding and new connections between the academic and nonacademic worlds. We’re delighted that Mr. Shipler will also have time to get to know our campus and to explore in depth how the classroom and campus relate to the broader society.”

Shipler’s visit to TU will also include a public lecture about freedom of speech at 7:30 Wednesday, Feb. 21, in the Flowers Foods Executive Classroom inside Smith-Bonvillian Hall on TU’s Forbes Campus. Shipler’s most recent book is “Freedom of Speech: Mightier than the Sword.” The Bookshelf is partnering with TU for the event and will have three of Shipler’s books available for purchase and signing by the author. His most recent as well as “Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land” (which won a Pulitzer Prize) and “The Working Poor: Invisible in America.” Shipler will be available to sign books after his lecture.

Shipler worked for The New York Times from 1966 to 1988, reporting from New York, Saigon, Moscow, and Jerusalem before serving as chief diplomatic correspondent in Washington. He shared a George Polk Award for his coverage of the 1982 war in Lebanon and was executive producer, writer, and narrator of two PBS documentaries on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of which won an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast journalism.

He is the author of four other books: “Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams”; “A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America”; “The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties”; and “Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America.”

Shipler has been a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a trustee of Dartmouth College, chair of the Pulitzer jury on general nonfiction, a writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California, and a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. He has taught at Princeton University, at American University in Washington, D.C., and at Dartmouth College.

The Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program, which is administered by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) in Washington, D.C., brings prominent artists, diplomats, journalists, business leaders and other professionals to campuses across the United States for a week-long residential program of classes, seminars, workshops, lectures, and informal discussions. For more than 45 years, Visiting Fellows have been introducing students and faculty members at liberal arts colleges to a wide range of perspectives on life, society, community and achievement. The Visiting Fellows program is available to all four-year colleges and universities. For more information, visit CIC’s website at www.cic.edu/VisitingFellows.