On Monday evening, June 10, ICNY supporters gather to celebrate “The Courage of Conviction – Then & Now,” with Master of Ceremonies Ray Suarez, Senior Correspondent, PBS Newshour.
Ray Suarez joined The NewsHour in October 1999 as a Washington-based Senior Correspondent. Suarez came to The NewsHour from NPR where he had been host of the nationwide, call-in news program “Talk of the Nation” since 1993. Prior to that, he spent seven years covering local and national stories for the NBC-owned station, WMAQ-TV in Chicago.
He has completed the companion volume to a coming documentary series for PBS, chronicling the history of Latinos in America. He is the author most recently of The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America. Suarez also wrote The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration (Free Press, 1999), and has contributed to several other books, including The Oxford Companion to American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2012), What We See (New Village Press, 2010), How I Learned English (National Geographic, 2007), Brooklyn: A State of Mind (Workman, 2001), Local Heroes (Norton, 2000), Saving America’s Treasures (National Geographic, 2000), and Las Christmas (Knopf, 1998). Suarez also hosts the monthly foreign affairs radio program “America Abroad” for Public Radio International, and the nationally-broadcast weekly political program “Need to Know” for PBS. From 2008-11, he was the anchor of the weekly program on Latino politics, “Destination Casa Blanca,” for HITN TV.
At the NewsHour, Suarez is the lead correspondent for the program’s global health coverage. He has reported on some of the world’s most threatening health crises from Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
Earlier in his career, Suarez was a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, a producer for the ABC Radio Network in New York, a reporter for CBS Radio in Rome, and a reporter for various American and British news services in London. Over the years he has narrated, anchored and reported many documentaries for public radio and television including the nationally-broadcasts Homeland (2012, PBS/KETC TV), Anatomy of a Pandemic (2009, PBS) and Jerusalem: The Center of the World (2009, PBS), a weekly series, Follow the Money (1997, PBS), and programs including Who Speaks for Islam? (LinkTV, 2005, 2009) By The People (PBS, 2004-07), The Journey Home (2004, WETA) The Execution Tapes (2001, Public Radio), and Through Our Own Eyes (2000, KQED).
In 2010 Suarez was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists. He is a co-recipient of NPR’s 1993-94 and 1994-95 duPont-Columbia Silver Baton Awards for on-site coverage of the first all-race elections in South Africa and the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, respectively. He was honored with the 1996 Ruben Salazar Award from the National Council of La Raza, and the 2005 Distinguished Policy Leadership Award from UCLA’s School of Public Policy.
Suarez holds a B.A. in African History from New York University and an M.A. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by more than a dozen colleges and universities, most recently by the City College of New York. He is a winner of a Benton Fellowship in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Chicago. He has also been honored with a Distinguished Alumnus Award from NYU, and a Professional Achievement Award from the University of Chicago. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Suarez lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children.
In the following video, taken at the University of Denver, Mr. Suarez talks about the relationship between religion and politics.
ICNY cordially invites you to join Ray Suarez and guests in honoring these distinguished individuals:
- Sister Pat Farrell, OSF, Vice President, Sisters of St. Francis of Dubuque & Past President, Leadership Conference of Women Religious
- Rev. Dr. C. T. Vivian, Veteran Civil Rights Activist & Colleague of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Bill Moyers, Host, PBS Bill Moyers Journal
- Judith Moyers, CEO, Public Affairs Television
- Russell Simmons, Chairman, Foundation for Ethnic Understanding
