Most of his career was spent at the Washington Post, where he worked for more than a quarter of a century.  He tells of his experiences as its Bureau Chief in Beijing, Paris, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Nairobi, Manila and New York City.
 
Professor Richburg also recounts his experiences of reporting on some of the most notable events of recent decades including: the invasion in Iraq; the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan; the US military intervention in Somalia; the genocide in Rwanda; the 1997 Hong Kong handover; the Asian economic crisis; and the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Party Congress in Beijing in 2012.
 
Professor Keith Richburg is from the United States and was educated at the University of Michigan and The London School of Economics.  He first worked for the Washington Post as an intern and went on to serve as its Bureau Chief in Beijing, Paris, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Nairobi, Manila and New York City.  He was the Washington Post’s Foreign Editor during 2005–2007 and was Journalist-in-Residence at the East-West Center in Hawaii in 1990.
 
Professor Richburg served as the president of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club at two challenging periods, first in 1997 and more recently just completed two more terms.  He was Director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong until the end of June 2023 and is about to take up a post as Visiting Professor at Princeton University.
 
Professor Richburg has won several awards, including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, the National Association of Black Journalists Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Africa.  He is the author of book, “Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa” that was described by USA TODAY as “the most honest book to emerge from Africa in a long time”.  His regular media appearances include CNN, NBC, Al Jazeera, C-SPAN, Sky News and France 24, among others.  He is a frequent speaker worldwide and was recently a featured speaker in Ukraine under the US Embassy Speakers’ Program.