75th Anniversary Issue
As she lay dying, the widow of a Milwaukee newspaper editor made a gift that has now invigorated journalism for 75 years. Agnes Wahl Nieman, a well-educated woman with a fondness for bicycling, willed money to Harvard to “promote and elevate the standards of journalism.” That $1.4 million bequest (worth about $23 million in today’s dollars) funded the Nieman Fellowship program that has brought 1,442 journalists from around the world to Harvard for a year of study. To celebrate the Nieman Foundation for Journalism’s 75th anniversary, Nieman Reports tells the stories of 75 Nieman Fellows, among them pioneers in biography, documentary filmmaking, and investigative journalism.
Prasad (1924–2008), a longtime spokesman for Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, was a news editor for The Indian Express in Bombay, India
Our father spoke often of his Nieman days and how the Fellowship gave him a unique opportunity to take on subjects, such as 20th-century Chinese politics. At a talk by New York Governor Thomas Dewey, Prasad was in the front row. Seeing an Indian, he launched into a criticism of Nehru and India’s non-aligned foreign policy. Our father, a supporter of Nehru, did not expect such a trenchant attack, and it opened his eyes to what the post-colonial world could expect from the U.S. He admired the openness and enterprise he saw in America. His year at Harvard greatly shaped his understanding of international relations and journalism, and he put it to use as a widely read columnist and the principal speechwriter and press adviser to three Indian prime ministers.
By Prasad’s sons, Sanjiva and Ravi Prasad.
Our father spoke often of his Nieman days and how the Fellowship gave him a unique opportunity to take on subjects, such as 20th-century Chinese politics. At a talk by New York Governor Thomas Dewey, Prasad was in the front row. Seeing an Indian, he launched into a criticism of Nehru and India’s non-aligned foreign policy. Our father, a supporter of Nehru, did not expect such a trenchant attack, and it opened his eyes to what the post-colonial world could expect from the U.S. He admired the openness and enterprise he saw in America. His year at Harvard greatly shaped his understanding of international relations and journalism, and he put it to use as a widely read columnist and the principal speechwriter and press adviser to three Indian prime ministers. By Prasad’s sons, Sanjiva and Ravi Prasad.
