Topping, Seymour

Seymour Topping has had a varied career as foreign correspondent, editor, university professor and author. He retired in 2002 as Administrator of the Pulitzer after nine years of service and was appointed San Paolo Professor Emeritus of International Journalism at Columbia University.

Prior to Columbia, he was a member of the New York Times for thirty years as chief correspondent in Moscow and Southeast Asia, foreign editor, deputy managing editor and managing editor from 1986 to 1987. After service as an infantry officer in the Pacific during World War II, he covered the Chinese Civil War for The Associated Press, the French Indochinese War, London and Berlin before joining the New York Times in 1959.

Born in New York in 1921, he is graduate of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. He is the author of Journey Between Two Chinas, Harper and Row, 1972;The Peking Letter: A Novel of the Chinese Civil War Public Affairs 1999, and just completed another historical novel, Fatal Crossing, A Novel of Vietnam 1945. East Bridge 2004. He co-authored Report from Red China Quadrangle Books 1971.

He is married to Audrey Ronning Topping, a photo journalist, whose father, Chester Ronning, served as Canadian ambassador to China, and grandparents were Lutheran missionaries in China.

Board member (Administrator) 1993-2001.