The Alaska World Affairs Council Presents

Panel Discussion

"What in the World?
The 2008 Presidential Campaign and Foreign Policies"

Friday, 29th February, 2008 – Hilton Hotel
Doors open at 11:30 a.m. - Program begins at 12:00 p.m.
For Reservations
RSVP by Wednesday, 27th February to the Alaska World Affairs Council
by telephone 276-8038 or by email to AlaskaWorldAffairs.org .
Lunch Program $20 for Members - $25 for Non-Members - $6 for Coffee Only

Elizabeth Arnold is a freelance reporter for NPR. From 2000 - 2004, she was an NPR national correspondent, covering America's public lands with a focus on the environment, politics, economics, and culture.

Arnold's 15 years of reporting experience with NPR began in rural Alaska, moved to the halls of Congress and the presidential campaign trail, and then back west. That path imbues Arnold's reports with both the seasoned experience of national politics and a personal understanding of the rapidly changing American West.

From a Yu'pik Eskimo school struggling with the new requirements of No Child Left Behind to the impacts of the Bush Administration's attempts to jumpstart domestic energy production, Arnold gives voice to people and places seldom heard in the national debate, and to the reality of decisions made in Washington, D.C.

Arnold's stories are heard on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Her analysis has also been featured on NPR's Talk of the Nation and numerous election specials. She has been a substitute host for Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She has been a frequent panelist on PBS's Washington Week in Review and a guest on the Jim Lehrer Newhour.

Arnold's career with NPR officially began the day the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound. Visiting NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., on an internship, she was immediately pressed into service, and spent the next few weeks covering the response to the massive oil spill from the White House to the congressional investigation on Capitol Hill.

Though Arnold joined NPR on a full time basis in 1991, her work was already familiar to NPR listeners. She entered the broadcast medium in 1985 at member station KTOO in Juneau, Alaska, where she covered local and statewide issues and provided NPR with a stream of national stories from the rare sighting of a blue glacier bear to the politics of the timber harvest in Tongass National Forest.

Arnold is perhaps best known for nearly a decade of political reporting on Capitol Hill. As a congressional reporter and then as NPR's national political correspondent, Arnold covered the House and Senate, congressional campaigns, and four presidential elections. From incumbent President George Bush's battle to win a second term to the Clinton White House, the Republican takeover of Congress, Bob Dole's ill-fated campaign, and George W. Bush's controversial election, Arnold tirelessly reported local, state, and national politics from the heartland, the campaign plane, and the convention halls. Along the way she won numerous awards, most notably the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for Outstanding Journalism, the Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting on Congress, and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for Excellence in Journalism.

She's also received top honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, American Women in Radio and Television, and the Washington Press Club Foundation.
Arnold began her career in journalism between seasons as a commercial salmon fisherman, as a reporter for the San Juan Examiner and the Telluride Times in Colorado and for the Tundra Drums, in Bethel, Alaska.

Arnold graduated cum laude from Colgate University in New York with bachelor's degrees in English and fine arts. She remains an avid hiker, skier, and long-distance runner. (She did, however, sell her Harley Davidson to pay for her son's pre-school tuition.)