Robert Hodierne '68 will deliver the Alumni Lecture on Friday afternoon at Grinnell's 129th Reunion, May 30-June 1, 2008. A distinguished journalist for more than 35 years, including work as a writer, editor, and photographer for newspapers, wire services, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet, Hodierne has also taught journalism at the university level. He was a member of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize, and has also been a Pulitzer juror. For three years, between 1987 and 1990, Hodierne quit working and sailed a 32-foot boat through the South Pacific and on to Japan.

In 1966, certain that the war in Vietnam would blow over before he could finish college, Hodierne dropped out of Grinnell and went to Saigon to work as a freelance photographer - a stringer in the terms of the day. He stayed until the summer of 1967. After finishing his B.A. in political science at Grinnell, he returned to Vietnam in early 1969. His photographs appeared in numerous major U.S. and European magazines. The 1968 Popular Photography Annual includes a portfolio of Hodierne's work, and his photos have appeared in the Time-Life series of Vietnam books.

Hodierne covered the war from the DMZ in the north to the Mekong Delta in the south, from the Central Highlands to the coastal plains. He photographed soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and Vietnamese civilians caught up in the war. In addition to his work as a photographer, Hodierne also wrote. A story he wrote for Stars and Stripes about troops refusing to fight caused the chief spokesman for the U.S. Army in Vietnam to say the story as gave aid and comfort to the enemy and was "treason." After leaving Vietnam in the spring of 1970, Hodierne gave up photography for reporting and editing.

Until recently, Hodierne was senior managing editor for Military Times, which produces the weekly newspapers Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, Air Force Times, Defense News, and Federal Times, plus the monthly Armed Forces Journal and its sister magazines, C4ISR Journal and Training and Simulation Journal and their associated websites. He managed coverage of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and ran the coverage of 13 journalists embedded in Iraq from a bureau in Qatar. In early 2004, Hodierne did a six-week tour in Iraq writing stories about the war. He went back again for a month in 2005. More recently, Hodierne led Military Times into the production of television documentaries and was the executive producer of "The Making of a Marine Officer."

For three years (1983-86) Hodierne taught journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, and for seven years presented a series of lectures on investigative reporting at the University of Massachusetts. He has conducted seminars on ethics and reporting for professional organizations including Sigma Delta Chi and the Radio and Television News Directors Association. In January 2007, Hodierne returned to Grinnell College as a guest lecturer for the Rosenfield Program in Public Affairs, International Relations, and Human Rights. Hodierne lectured at Grinnell in September 2007 as part of a week-long symposium celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.’s visit to Grinnell 40 years earlier. Hodierne’s talk was titled, "Iraq and Vietnam: Different Wars, Different Soldiers." Starting in the fall, Hodierne will be an associate professor of journalism at the University of Richmond in Virginia.


Back to Friday, May 30 Events