Ashkinaze, Carole

Carole Ashkinaze was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1945. Ashkinaze spent her childhood in the suburban town of Malverne, Long Island in Nassau County, approximately twenty miles outside of New York [City]. She attended St. Lawrence University in New York, spending her junior year abroad (at the Sorbonne and the University of Rouen) and graduated with honors from St. Lawrence; then went on to pursue a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1967. After graduating, Ashkinaze went to work for Newsday on Long Island, remaining six and a half years. But it was her role as reporter and then columnist and editorial board member for the Atlanta Journal & Constitution that won her national recognition. Ashkinaze worked for the AJC from 1976 through 1989, eventually moving to the Chicago Sun-Times, working as both a columnist and as a member of the editorial board. In Atlanta, Ashkinaze wrote about a number of controversial issues including the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, women's rights, feminism, poverty, health-care, politics, education and race. In Chicago, where Ashkinaze was the only pro-choice commentator for any major Chicago news organization, and a member of the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, her columns won many journalism awards and a large popular following; she was also a popular radio and TV personality, and regular panelist on "The Lassiter Group." Her pro-choice columns in the Sun-Times also made her a target of abortion foes, one of whom sent her several nude pictures of himself, bearing obscene messages. In 1992, following the publication of her 1991 book, The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity (with Gary Orfield), about race and poverty, Ashkinaze left the Sun-Times and returned to Atlanta to work with former President Jimmy Carter on his first domestic policy initiative, The Atlanta Project (later called The America Project), which was an attempt to alleviate the worst aspects of poverty across an entire community. She contributed her services to that project, working pro bono until the following year, when she was named Media Chief of the United Nations Children's Fund and moved to New York. She later left UNICEF and moved to Washington, D.C. as a freelance journalist, writing for such national publications as Business Week, Horizon, and Moment magazines. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, she became a consultant to the American Civil Liberties Union. Reports she wrote and edited for the ACLU included Civil Liberties After 9/11 (2002) and Freedom Under Fire (2003). She also worked with the Communications Consortium Media Center, the Harvard Civil Rights Project, the Fulbright Program and other nonprofits.

From the description of Carole Ashkinaze papers, 1970-1995. (Georgia State University). WorldCat record id: 62112722

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