UO Scoops Up Noted Journalist

Journalist Peter Laufer now calls the University of Oregon home thanks to a new endowed chair funded by the estate of James and Haya Wallace. James Wallace, a 1950 UO journalism graduate, covered the Vietnam War for U.S. News & World Report and the Middle East and Cuba for The Wall Street Journal.

"The opportunity to hold this chair in particular, because of the heritage that comes with it, is thrilling," Laufer said. He described Wallace as a foreign correspondent "in the era of the fedora and trench coat," going anywhere and everywhere to find the story and bring it home at a time when journalism was more about the story than the storyteller. "That's an extraordinarily important lesson for students today," he said. 

Laufer's knack for being at the scene of historic events is perhaps best illustrated by his reporting from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border on the Soviet invasion for NBC Radio and for CBS Radio as the Berlin Wall fell. "It's fun to go to the place where nobody else is and have it for yourself," he admitted, "but I've got work to do right here, helping build out a cadre of journalists who are Ducks." 

Soon after his arrival last fall, Laufer immediately set about bringing the world to his students by inviting a group of Iraqi journalists to campus. "We're joining with our colleagues worldwide in reinventing journalism for the current era and for the future," he said. "The Ducks here in Allen Hall are changing the world of journalism, literally, and that's what will change the world." 

Above all, Laufer refutes doomsayers who claim journalism's heyday has passed. He points out that enrollment in the UO's journalism school is at an all-time high. The ten-fold increase in majors is driving a $15 million project, funded by gifts and state bonds, to build a three-story addition to Allen Hall. 

"It's just a spectacular time to be at the University of Oregon and here at the School of Journalism and Communication," he enthused. "The energy is palpable and the feeling is that of focused but explosive growth." 

A master of multiple forms of media, Laufer also has written eighteen well-received books of social and political criticism. No Animals Were Harmed During the Writing of This Book, the final installment in his natural history trilogy, will be published this fall.

Learn more about his work at peterlaufer.com.