Saint John's University                                                                 
 

Nick Hayes is a popular commentator on international affairs for public radio and television. His writings have appeared in a wide range of publications from the scholarly Slavic Review to the popular Interview Magazine. His recent articles and photography have appeared in The Moscow Times, Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, Interview Magazine, Newsweek International, and Utne.com.

Since the 1980s, he has worked with Twin Cities Public Television as a featured commentator and field correspondent for its popular weekly public affairs program Almanac.  On Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), Hayes is a regularly featured commentator for the daily public affairs program Midday on issues ranging from political turmoil in post-communist Europe to the war in Iraq.  He has appeared on PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Religion and Ethics News Weekly and given radio commentaries for NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered and Public Radio International’s Marketplace. "Hayes, in my view, is one of a handful modern American academics whose command of his subject is matched only by his ability to make it come alive for ordinary people," says Bill Hanley, executive vice president of Twin Cities Public Television. “During the late 1980s, many Minnesotans witnessed the demise of Soviet communism through Dr. Hayes' eyes. His enthusiasm and imagination have led to hundreds of viewer comments over the years."

As the Cold War played out its dramatic final chapter, both national and local news media turned to Hayes to make sense of the complex and often obscure forces that brought an end to the communist era. From Maureen Dowd in The New York Times to Ted Koppel on ABC's "Nightline," journalists sought his help in tracking the end of the Soviet Union. He received an Emmy in 1991 for his work on TPT's special report "Television and Democracy in Russia."

Hayes has widened his interests to include such global issues as the AIDS pandemic and genocide. His media projects have taken him on assignment to China, South Africa, Rwanda and the Balkans. In 1994-95, as a Fulbright Fellow in Journalism, he was based in Zagreb, Croatia, from where he filed reports on the war in the ex-Yugoslavia.

His latest writings include a reflection on the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in the Utne Magazine and a retrospective of Gorbachev's legacy published in The Moscow Times.  Over the past year, he has published commentaries for several newspapers on Russian President Putin's tactics in Chechnya, his interference interference in the Fall 2004 presidential election in Ukraine and the charade of his re-election in March to a second Term.         

In an age when the media has offered sound bites and hyperbole, Hayes succeeded both in reaching a mass audience and conveying complexity of world events. "Dr. Hayes is a scholar of creativity and imagination, with a finely wrought sensitivity to the multi-layered capacity of humans to solve vexing global issues or exacerbate them," says Saint John's President Dietrich Reinhart, O.S.B.