Photo by Chelsea Katz

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Rohde said coming to Northwestern as a cherub 27 years ago was the first time he had traveled so far west. That summer whetted his appetite for journalism and exploring.

“The thing I like best about being a reporter is that I’ve always liked travel,” Rohde said. “I went out and saw the world thanks to journalism.”

Journalism and travel also got him kidnapped and almost killed.

Rohde spoke on July 21 to cherubs about his experiences as a reporter for The New York Times covering the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. He described parts of the world he said he never wishes to see again.

While doing research in November 2008, he arranged for an interview with a Taliban commander but was kidnapped by the Taliban just south of the Afghanistan capital of Kabul. He, his Afghan colleague Tahir Luddin and their Afghan driver Asad Mangal were held captive in Pakistan for seven months. Although he was not abused, Rohde feared for the safety of the Afghans, who are generally the first killed by the Taliban in kidnappings.

“I was very worried that my two Afghan colleagues would be killed, and I felt terrible for my family,” he said. “I thought I had foolishly pursued an interview without thinking it through carefully enough.”

When Rohde and Luddin realized the Taliban guards were not negotiating for their release, they looked for an opportunity to escape. On June 20, 2009, Rohde and Luddin snuck through the house in which they were held captive. While the guards slept, they climbed down the side using a rope Rohde found two weeks earlier.

“We were so desperate that we were willing to risk escaping and maybe dying,” he said. “We hated our kidnappers so much that we wanted them to get nothing for us.”

They ran to a Pakistani army base nearby, where they were helped by guards and flown home to the United States.

When he arrived home, he wrote a book with his wife, Kristen Mulvihill, about their experience. Each cherub and instructor received a copy of the 2010 book, A Rope and A Prayer, and most got them signed by Rohde.

Ingrid Sydenstricker, of New York, said she was interested in international reporting before she entered the program. After living in Brazil and France, she said she is eager to work as an international reporter even in hostile locations, despite ordeals like Rohde’s.

“If there’s a story to be told, if something’s going on there that people need to know about, then someone has to go,” she said. “Afghanistan, especially now, is under the spotlight, and it affects not only American citizens but the entire world.”

Sydenstricker’s interest in international journalism is why Rohde talked to cherubs. He said they are the future of journalism.

“Times are tough but times have never been this exciting,” he said. “There is more change in journalism now than there has been in decades. You are the generation that will revitalize journalism.”