Thomas Loren Friedman is an American political commentator and author.
40 Facts About Thomas Friedman
2.
Thomas Friedman is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for The New York Times.
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Thomas Friedman has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues.
4.
Thomas Friedman played a lot of sports, and became serious about tennis and golf.
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Thomas Friedman caddied at a local country club and in 1970 caddied for professional golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez when the US Open came to town.
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Thomas Friedman attended Hebrew school five days a week until his Bar Mitzvah, then St Louis Park High School, where he wrote articles for his school's newspaper.
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Thomas Friedman became enamored with Israel after a visit there in December 1968, and he spent all three of his high school summers living on Kibbutz HaHotrim, near Haifa.
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Thomas Friedman pursued Arabic studies at The American University in Cairo, where he graduated in 1974 from its Arabic language unit.
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Thomas Friedman later taught a class in economics at Brandeis in 2006, and was a commencement speaker there in 2007.
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Thomas Friedman joined the London bureau of United Press International after completing his master's degree.
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Thomas Friedman was dispatched a year later to Beirut, where he lived from June 1979 to May 1981 while covering the Lebanon Civil War.
12.
Thomas Friedman was hired by The New York Times as a reporter in 1981 and re-dispatched to Beirut at the start of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
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In June 1984, Thomas Friedman was transferred to Jerusalem, where he served as the New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief until February 1988.
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Thomas Friedman wrote a book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, describing his experiences in the Middle East, which won the 1989 US National Book Award for Nonfiction.
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Thomas Friedman received the 2004 Overseas Press Club Award for lifetime achievement and the same year was named to the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
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In May 2011, The New York Times reported that President Barack Obama "has sounded out" Thomas Friedman concerning Middle East issues.
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Thomas Friedman has been criticized for his staunch advocacy of the Iraq War and unregulated trade and his early support of Saudi Royal Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
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Thomas Friedman has publicly expressed his support for the biometrics based Unique Identification program of India.
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Thomas Friedman first discussed his views on globalization in the book The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
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In 2004, visits to Bangalore, India, and Dalian, China, led Thomas Friedman to write a follow-up analysis, The World Is Flat.
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Thomas Friedman believes that individual countries must sacrifice some degree of economic sovereignty to global institutions, a situation he has termed the "golden straitjacket".
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In 2000, Thomas Friedman championed Free Trade with The People's Republic of China, claiming that Free Trade would make China more democratic.
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Thomas Friedman has expressed concern about the United States' lack of energy independence.
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Thomas Friedman was awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat".
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Thomas Friedman said the governmental speech-monitoring should go beyond those who actually advocate violence, and include those whom former State Department spokesperson Jamie Rubin calls "excuse makers".
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Thomas Friedman supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, writing that the establishment of a democratic state in the Middle East would force other countries in the region to liberalize and modernize.
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Thomas Friedman has been criticized by organizations such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting for defending Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon as a form of "educating" Israel's opponents; according to FAIR, Thomas Friedman was explicitly endorsing terrorism by Israel against Lebanese and Palestinians.
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Journalist Glenn Greenwald and professor Noam Chomsky accused Thomas Friedman of endorsing and encouraging terrorism by Israeli forces.
29.
Political reporter Belen Fernandez heavily critiques Thomas Friedman's commentary regarding Israel.
30.
Fernandez suggests that Thomas Friedman is most worried about successfully maintaining Israel's Jewish ethnocracy and actively opposing a "one-man, one-vote" system of democracy.
31.
Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat was a bestseller in the country, although criticism of China in the book was removed when it was published in the country.
32.
Cockburn said Thomas Friedman's hubris allowed him to pass off another war correspondent's experience in Beirut as his own.
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Thomas Friedman has hosted several documentaries for the Discovery Channel from several locations around the world.
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Thomas Friedman explores efforts by companies and individuals to reduce their carbon footprint and save money with conservation, efficiency, and technologies such as solar, wind, biomass, nuclear, and clean coal.
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In 2014, Thomas Friedman served as a correspondent for Years of Living Dangerously, a documentary show about climate change.
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Thomas Friedman's wife, Ann is a teacher and a native of Marshalltown, Iowa.
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Thomas Friedman supported Hillary Clinton for President of the United States in the 2016 election, and supported Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 primaries.
38.
Thomas Friedman supported Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election.
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Thomas Friedman is on the board of directors for Planet Word, a Washington, DC based private museum dedicated to language.
40.
Thomas Friedman was elected to the American Philosophical Society that same year.