Eugene Robinson: 2027 Hatfield Lecture

Eugene Robinson is an award-winning journalist, political analyst on MSNBC, and the author of four books, most recently Freedom Lost, Freedom Won: A Personal History of America. Through his own family’s well-documented history, the book demonstrates how African American history is inseparable from the larger American story, tracing generations from his great-great-grandfather’s emancipation through Robinson’s own coming of age during the civil rights movement and beyond.

Robinson was a twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post, where he won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his columns on the 2008 presidential election. During his 45-year career at The Washington Post, he served in a variety of leadership roles, including city editor, foreign editor, assistant managing editor of the Style section, and columnist, before departing the newspaper in 2025.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Robinson was the first Black student to serve as co-editor-in-chief of the award-winning student newspaper, The Michigan Daily. Before joining The Washington Post in 1980, he was a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle.

Robinson is also the author of Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (2010), Last Dance in Havana (2004), and Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race (1999). He was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, served as a member and chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Robinson was married for 45 years to the artist Avis Collins Robinson, who passed away in October 2023.