Alumni Award

Self-help experts often encourage us to follow our passion. By following his own, Robert Hodierne '68 has helped us better understand the world in which we live.

At Grinnell, Hodierne pursued a political science degree while keeping busy outside the classroom with the newspaper and yearbook. While war protests roiled the nation, he refused to sit on the sidelines. Instead, he went to Vietnam to cover the war in words and photographs. He was the youngest fully-accredited foreign journalist covering the war. His photos appeared in newspapers and magazines across the nation.

After returning home, he came back to Grinnell to finish his education, and then worked as a writer and editor at newspapers including the Minneapolis Star, Charlotte Observer, and Mercury News. While at the Observer, he was part of a team that produced a series of stories about brown lung; the series earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Robert Kennedy Award.

In 1987, he pursued a different kind of passion: he quit his job to sail a 32-foot sailboat through the South Pacific and on to Japan, where he stayed on to teach English and write.

Since 2001, Hodierne has worked as an editor at the Military Times, a newsroom that produces several weekly newspapers and monthly magazines. During his tenure, he has not shied away from difficult positions: in 2006, he backed an editorial calling for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld tendered his resignation just two days later.

For his willingness and ability to uncover and share difficult truths, we are proud to honor Robert Hodierne '68.

See Hodierne's 2008 alumni lecture: Lessons Unlearned, comparing the Vietnam conflict with the current situation in Iraq.