Reporter shares his wisdom

Award-winning journalist and 1979 College graduate Ron Allen returned to Penn on Wednesday to share his view on working life. It was a homecoming in more than one sense. As a foreign correspondent for ABC and then for NBC News, he has been based in London since 1992, covering breaking news around the world. Starting with a breakfast dialogue at the Inn at Penn and ending with a dinner hosted by College Dean Richard Beeman, Allen had a busy schedule on Wednesday. In the afternoon, as a guest of the Fox Leadership Program, he gave the final address of this semester's Lessons in Leadership series to an audience of 60 students and faculty at the Amado Recital Room of Irvine Auditorium. Allen recounted his experiences as an American journalist thrust into various international hot-spots. During the Rwandan genocide of 1995, the United Nations vehicle in which the African-American reporter was traveling was stopped at a roadblock by armed Hutu vigilantes, who were on the lookout for ethnic Tutsis. Mistaken for one, Allen had to wave his American passport and speak with a strong New York accent to avoid harm. Recounting these and other harrowing assignments, Allen reflected on how his college education was at once relevant and irrelevant to his two-decade career. "Once you get beyond these walls, people will no longer define you based on your major or your degree," he said. Allen said that, rather than the academic instruction, the practical life-skills learned unconsciously through meeting college deadlines helped him the most in his career, giving him "a level of mental toughness" necessary to do the "social science research on the fly" that his job required. Reacting to the talk, College junior Stefan Ellis commended the "honest and straightforward" nature of Allen's talk. Surveying the pros and cons of life as a television journalist, Allen showed how the stresses and constraints of the news business are redeemed by the ability to shape public opinion and chisel away at American self-absorption. Moreover, there is the joy of an intrepid life. "I still love the thrill of getting in an airplane and flying to some unknown place and trying to sort out what is going on there."

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