Environmental Journalist Alexander Kaufman Receives East-West Center’s Inaugural Melvin M.S. Goo Writing Fellowship

The East-West Center is delighted to announce award-winning writer and Huffington Post senior reporter Alexander C. Kaufman as the recipient of the first Melvin M.S. Goo Writing Fellowship. Supported by a generous endowment from the Melvin M.S. Goo Memorial Fund, the fellowship provides financial support to a Chinese or American journalist, author, or writer for projects that enhance understanding between the United States and China.

A two-time winner of the SEAL Environmental Journalism Award and a finalist for a 2022 Covering Climate Now Award, Kaufman has worked for numerous publications covering nuclear energy and climate issues all around Europe and East Asia, including reporting on cutting-edge research at the Dongguan particle physics laboratory in China. With the Goo Fellowship, he plans to continue his work with a project on China’s rapidly growing nuclear power industry.

“Alexander’s project is a terrific first award for this new fellowship centered on US-China reporting,” said East-West Center Journalism Program Manager Susan Kreifels. “The selection committee was impressed with his timely topic, his credentials, and his plan to reach a broad audience in both English and Chinese languages.”

“My story will aim to tell the past, present, and future of China’s civilian nuclear energy program and what its rise means for the West at this critical juncture in history, including potential avenues for collaboration,” Kaufman said of the work he will be doing under the fellowship. As part of the Goo Fellowship, he plans to travel to China to research the topic and eventually publish his story in both English and Mandarin to reach a broader international audience.

Ultimately, Kaufman plans to collate his international reporting into a mass-market book charting the resurgence of nuclear energy in a world ravaged by climate change. He notes that his trip to China as part of the Goo Fellowship will form a central component of that work.

“Melvin M.S. Goo spent his career telling the opening chapters of the story that defines a world where great Asian powers like China set the global news agenda, yet little has been written in English about China’s achievements in nuclear energy,” said Kaufman. “I’m deeply humbled by the opportunity to shed light on this critical development and grateful to the East-West Center for supporting my effort to tell a comprehensive, sophisticated, but accessible story that will help readers on both sides of the Pacific to understand the current state of play.”

About the Melvin M.S. Goo Memorial Fund

The Melvin M.S. Goo Memorial Fund was established through a gift of the Melvin M.S. Goo Revocable Living Trust to memorialize Mr. Goo’s intent for his legacy gift to enhance understanding between the United States and China. Melvin M.S. Goo was a veteran journalist who led a 34-year career in the United States and Asia prior to his passing in 2016. Born in Macau and graduating high school in Honolulu, Hawaii, Mr. Goo worked for 18 years as a reporter, editor, and editorial writer at The Honolulu Advertiser. In 1977 he was awarded the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. Mr. Goo continued his career in Asia, rising to Chief News Editor at The Nikkei Weekly and later Editor-in-Chief at Taiwan News.

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