Claudia Rosett was a foreign policy fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, and an award-winning journalist who reported over 37 years from Asia, the former Soviet Union, Latin America and the Middle East. She is widely credited with groundbreaking reporting on corruption at the United Nations. From 1984-2002 Ms. Rosett was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, serving as a member of the Editorial Board in New York (1997-2002); reporter, promoted to bureau chief, in Moscow (1993-96); editorial-page editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong (1986-93); and book review editor in New York (1984-86). From 2003-2015 she was journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Ms. Rosett has contributed to numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Weekly Standard, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Sun, Forbes.com and The Journal of International Security Affairs. She makes frequent appearances on TV and radio, and has appeared before six U.S. Senate and House committees and subcommittees to testify on such topics as U.N. corruption and reform, and the Iran-North Korea strategic alliance.

Ms. Rosett is a winner of the Journalism Leadership Eagle Award of the New York Respect for Law Alliance (2013); and the Eric Breindel Award (2005) and Mightier Pen Award (2005) for her reporting on the United Nations Iraq Oil-for-Food program. For her on-site coverage of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, Ms. Rosett won an Overseas Press Club Citation for Excellence. In 1994, writing for The Wall Street Journal, she broke the full story of North Korean labor camps in the Russian Far East, reporting from the camps. Ms. Rosett holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Columbia University, and an M.B.A. with a specialization in finance from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business.

—–

Our beloved colleague Claudia Rosett died May 2023, at her home in upstate New York. Fearless, insightful, nuanced, and clear eyed.

Claudia A. Rosett-Wilson was much admired and will be very much missed. An extraordinary career right till the end. Jimmy Lai called her the single best journalist reporting the truth about what was going on in Hong Kong. And ever and always a lovely human being.

Conversation and friendship are the most civilized of human endeavors, and Claudia was brilliant at both. She was a penetrating analyst of world affairs, and as a journalist she broke world-class stories. The sorrow here at IWF—and other places touched by Claudia in her distinguished career—is almost palpable.

David Asman, Claudia’s longtime colleague at the Wall Street Journal, tweeted this upon receiving the sad news:

In a just world Claudia Rosett would have had several Pulitzers…for her eye-witness accounts of Tiananmen Massacre, for reporting on USSR’s demise as WSJ‘s Moscow bureau chief, etc. She was also a wonderful friend for over 40 years. Swift passage to the greatest story of all.

Another friend from Claudia’s career at the Wall Street Journal, Mary Kissel, tweeted:

Devastated to learn of @CRosett’s passing. She witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre, broke the @UN Oil for Food scandal, tirelessly advocated for liberty, recited poetry gustily, loved generously. What a huge, huge loss.

Mary Kissel also recalled that, as a young writer, Claudia reviewed a Dr. Seuss book entirely in Seussian style. It was her first piece for the Wall Street Journal, which wisely snapped her up immediately. Kissel issued a string of tweets about Claudia’s personality and achievements, which will make you sad at the loss, but do read them.

The Wall Street Journal reprints Claudia’s on-the-spot reporting on the massacre in Tiananmen Square, which originally appeared in the Journal on June 5, 1989.

Claudia, who was 67, had been in and out of Sloane-Kettering for the last months of her life but contributed to IWF to the end. Her beloved husband Tim Wilson, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.K. Army, whom she met on one of her numerous assignments abroad, was holding her hand.