Christopher Lynn Hedges was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the son of a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Thomas Hedges. He grew up in upstate New York, graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut in 1975 and attended Colgate University where he received a B.A. in English Literature. He later obtained a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, where he studied under James Luther Adams. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in May 2009 from the Unitarian Universalist seminary, Starr King School for the Ministry, in Berkeley, California.
In 1983, Hedges began his career reporting on the conflict in El Salvador. Following six years in Latin America, he took time off to study Arabic and then went to Jerusalem and later Cairo. He spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief for
The New York Times. During the first Gulf War he was taken prisoner by the Iraqi Republican Guard while covering the Shiite uprising in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. He was released after a week to the International Committee of the Red Cross. He left the Middle East in 1995 for Sarajevo to cover the war in Bosnia followed by the war in Kosovo. Later, he joined the investigative team of
The New York Times, based in Paris, and covered terrorism.
He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the academic year of 1998-1999 where he studied classics. In addition to English, he speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and knows Latin and ancient Greek. He has written for numerous publications including
The Nation,
Foreign Affairs,
Harper's Magazine,
The New York Review of Books,
Granta,
Mother Jones,
New Humanist and Robert Scheer's web magazine Truthdig where he publishes a column every Monday.
Hedges, an outspoken critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, was also an early and vocal critic of the Iraq War. He questioned the rationale for war by the Bush administration and was critical of the early press coverage, calling it "shameful cheerleading". In May 2003, Hedges delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying:
- "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security."
Several hundred members of the audience booed and jeered his talk, although some applauded. Hedges' microphone was cut twice and two young men rushed the stage to try to prevent him from speaking. Hedges had to cut short his address and was escorted off campus by security officials before the ceremony was over. An editorial in
The Wall Street Journal denounced Hedges for his anti-war stance on May 24. His employer,
The New York Times, criticized his statements and issued him a written reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality." Hedges, refusing to accept these restrictions, left
The New York Times to become a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, write books and teach.
Hedges has stated that he is not a pacifist and supports humanitarian interventions, such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo, designed to stop campaigns of genocide. He nevertheless describes war as "the most potent narcotic invented by humankind."
Hedges states that his outlook is influenced by moral writers and ethicists such as George Orwell, Samuel Johnson, Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt, Elias Canetti, Dwight Macdonald, C. Wright Mills, Theodor Adorno and theologians such as William Stringfellow, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Abraham Heschel, and Reinhold Niebuhr.
In December 29, 2008 column for Truthdig, Hedges identified himself as a "socialist" in contrast to what he sees as "ruthless totalitarian capitalism."