Daniel Zwerdling, The Global Politics of Environmental Protection

DANIEL ZWERDLING began hosting National Public Radio's^® (NPR) Weekend All Things Considered^® in 1994. Since 1980, he has served NPR as an investigative correspondent covering environmental, health, science, and Third World development issues. From 1989 to 1993, Zwerdling was based in Nairobi, Kenya, where he examined nations struggling to develop across Africa and South Asia.

Zwerdling's stories have repeatedly attracted national attention and awards. In early 1986, he and NPR's Howard Berkes broke the story revealing that NASA officials launched the ill-fated Space Shuttle Challenger despite warnings that it might explode, as it eventually did. Their stories helped shape the course of the federal investigation into the tragedy.

His investigative series on the then-best-selling pesticide Chlordane revealed that the chemical was poisoning people and forcing them to abandon their homes. The stories prompted the manufacturer to remove the chemical from the market at the urging of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Zwerdling's story about the dangerous working conditions in Perdue chicken factories led to a federal investigation and a federal fine against the company.

Zwerdling has won numerous awards, including the Overseas Press Club Foundation Award, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award, the National Press Club Award for consumer reporting, the Robert F. Kennedy and Ohio State awards for international reporting, and the Champion-Tuck Award for economic reporting. He is the only journalist to have won the World Hunger Media Award twice -- in 1985 for reports on the drought and famine in Chad, and in 1983 for reports on environmental and economic problems plaguing U.S. farmers.

Before joining NPR in 1980, Zwerdling worked as a staff writer at The New Republic and as a freelance reporter. His work appeared in national publications such as The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Review of Books.

His groundbreaking articles in the early 1970s, suggesting that the typical American diet contributed to cancer and heart disease, incurred the wrath of the medical and food industry and establishments. When Zwerdling reported that successful commercial farmers in the United States and Europe had stopped using chemicals and were farming organically, the pesticide industry lambasted him, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched an investigation that confirmed his findings.

Zwerdling has served as adjunct professor of Media Ethics in the Communications Department at The American University in Washington, D.C. He currently is an associate of the Bard College Institute for Language and Thinking in New York. His book, Workplace Democracy (Harper & Row, 1980), is still used in colleges across the country.

• Sponsored by The William Jovanovich Lecture in Public Affairs. This lecture fund was established by Dr. and Mrs. Paul Brandwein to honor William Jovanovich, distinguished publisher and editor. Jovanovich is the author of six books, the most recent, Serbdom. Dr. Brandwein was a co-publisher at Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich and a close friend and associate of William Jovanovich. A dedicated teacher and environmentalist, Brandwein taught at Colorado College for twenty-five years during summer semesters. He received the Robert H. Carleton Award for National Leadership in the Science Education. The Paul F. Brandwein Institute, a nature conservancy in New York, is named in his honor.