George Herbert Walker, Jr. Lecture – Peter Pomerantsev

Renowned journalist and author Peter Pomerantsev will deliver the MacMillan Center’s annual George Herbert Walker, Jr. Lecture. Pomerantsev is a Soviet-born, British journalist who is the author of the recently published, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler.” Pomerantsev is a Senior Fellow at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he co-directs the Arena Initiative. His book on Russian propaganda, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and was nominated for the Samuel Johnson, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House and Gordon Burns Prizes. It is translated into over a dozen languages and was dramatized on BBC Radio 4. His new book, This is Not Propaganda, was released in August 2019 and has been shortlisted for the Gordon Burns Prize and was a Times Book of the Year.

Pomerantsev has testified on the challenges of information war and media development to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the UK Parliament Defense Select Committee. He was a specialist advisor on the ‘UK Parliamentary Committee on Fake News and was a member of USC Annenberg’s ‘Transatlantic Working Group on Internet Content Moderation and Freedom of Expression.’

Established in 1988, the George Herbert Walker, Jr. Lecture at the MacMillan Center has highlighted speakers and topics of global significance. Previous speakers include Permanent Representative of Myanmar to the United Nations Kyaw Moe Tun, former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and Ambassador to the Republic of Korea Christopher Hill.