Hodding Carter III

Hodding Carter III "an award-winning journalist, commentator, professor and State Department spokesman, is the former president and chief executive officer of the Knight Foundation. He will join the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as a professor of leadership and public policy in January 2006. Carter held the first Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Maryland College of Journalism, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. His journalistic career began at the Delta Democrat-Times, in Greenville, Miss., which his family owned. He was the newspaper's editor and associate publisher when he was tapped to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs under President Jimmy Carter, a role in which he most notably became the administration's spokesman during the Iran hostage crisis. After his government service, he was the president of MainStreet, a television production company specializing in public affairs television; he later became its chairman. Carter has won four national Emmy Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award for his documentaries. He has authored two books, The Reagan Years and The South Strikes Back, and has contributed to nine others. He currently serves on the boards of directors of the Century Foundation and of seven Dreyfus mutual funds."

He is a senior advisor for the Council for a Community of Democracies, is a director for the Center for Public Integrity and is on the board of governors for the Partnership for Public Service.


 * Prize Advisor, Civil Courage Prize
 * Advisory Board, USC Center on Public Diplomacy
 * Trustee, Century Foundation