Howard W. French

For the British newspaper editor, see Howard French (UK journalist).

Howard Waring French (born October 14, 1957) is an American journalist, author and photographer. Since 2008 he has been a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Prior to re-entering academia, French was a longtime foreign correspondent and senior writer with The New York Times.

Howard French
Born	Howard Waring French (1957-10-14) October 14, 1957 (age 67) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Occupation(s)	Journalist, author, photographer, Columbia University professor
Notable credit(s)	The New York Times Born in Blackness (book)
Spouse	Agnès French
Website	https://www.howardwfrench.com/

Biography

French was a university instructor in the Ivory Coast in the 1980s before becoming a journalist. He has reported extensively on the political affairs of Western and Central Africa. These reports were the basis for his 2004 book, A Continent for the Taking.

French joined The New York Times in 1986 and served as its bureau chief for the Caribbean and Central America from 1990 to 1994, covering Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and numerous other countries. He was one of the newspaper's first black correspondents.^[1]

From 1994 to 1998, French covered West and Central Africa for the Times, reporting on wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Central Africa, with particular attention to the fall of the longtime dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko.

From 1998 to 2003, French was Tokyo bureau chief for the Times, covering Japan and the Koreas. To prepare for the job, he spent a year studying Japanese at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. From 2003 to 2008, he was the Shanghai bureau chief. He reported on the political and social affairs of China, including the growth of civil society, the government crackdown on dissent in the Dongzhou protests of 2005, and the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. In addition to his native English, he speaks Mandarin, French, Spanish, and Japanese.^[2]

French has written frequently for The New York Review of Books and also contributed to The Atlantic and other publications, including writing "longreads" articles for The Guardian. Besides his reporting for The New York Times, French has authored a weekly column on regional affairs for the International Herald Tribune, and another weekly column on international affairs for Foreign Policy.^[3]

Among his five books, French is best known for the award-winning Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War (Liveright, 2021). The book challenges previous scholarship by giving Africans a more significant role as "prime movers" in the history of the Western World since the 15th century.^[4] His previous book was Everything Under the Heavens: How China's Past Helps Shape its Push for Global Power (Knopf, 2017).

French is also an internationally exhibited documentary photographer. His multi-year project, "Disappearing Shanghai", captured the rapidly shrinking old quarters of Shanghai. The exhibit was shown in Asia, Europe and the U.S. A book containing this work, Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, was published in 2012, in collaboration with the novelist and poet Qiu Xiaolong.^[5]

French is a member of the board of the Columbia Journalism Review and past president of IRIN (since renamed The New Humanitarian), a non-profit news agency based in Geneva that focuses on the humanitarian sector.

Fellowships:

• 1999 Jefferson Fellow, East-West Society, Honolulu, Hawaii
• 2011 Open Societies Foundation fellow

Honors

• 2025 Elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[6]
• 2022 Winner, Massachusetts African American History Museum Stone Book Award for Born in Blackness^[7]
• 2022 Winner, Hurston/Wright Award for Non-Fiction for Born in Blackness^[8]
• 2016 Professor of the Year, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
• 2005 Finalist, Hurston Wright Award for Non-Fiction for A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa
• 2004 Honorary Doctorate - University of Maryland, for commentary on East Asia

Works

• A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Knopf, 2004. ISBN 978-0375414619
• Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life with Qiu Xiaolong, Homa & Sekey 2012. ISBN 978-1931907811
• China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa, Knopf 2014. ISBN 978-0307946652
• Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power, Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. ISBN 978-0385353328
• Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War, Liveright, 2021. ISBN 978-1631495830