David Aikman Senior Fellow Emeritus

David Aikman, an award-winning print and broadcast journalist and author, is a specialist on Russia, China, East Asia, the Middle East, and religious freedom issues worldwide. During a lengthy career as a foreign correspondent, he reported for TIME Magazine from five continents and more than fifty countries.

David serves The Trinity Forum as Senior Fellow and is a regular Moderator. He is presently writer in residence and professor of history at Patrick Henry College. He is the founding chairman and a board member of Gegrapha, a global fellowship of journalists, and was recently a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He writes columns for Christianity Today and Provocations in addition to extensive freelance writing for such publications as The American Spectator and The Weekly Standard. He is a regular commentator and host on the Voice of America and has been a commentator on NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC.

David has written and edited numerous books, including Gorbachev: An Intimate Biography (NAL 1988). Massacre in Beijing: China’s Struggle for Democracy (Warner 1989); When the Almond Tree Blossoms (Word 1993)—a novel; Hope: The Heart’s Great Quest (Word 1995); and Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power (Regnery, second edition 2006). His collection of mini-biographies of prominent figures, Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century (Word 1998) has also been released as a documentary by PBS. He has also written two novels and interviewed a number of major world figures, including Mother Teresa, Manuel Noriega, Boris Yeltsin, Pham Van Dong, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Raised and educated in England, he earned his B.A. at Worcester College, Oxford, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Washington at Seattle. He speaks a number of languages, including Russian, Chinese, French, and German. A naturalized U.S. citizen, David lives in Virginia and has two grown daughters.

Related Trinity Forum Readings

“On Being Human” by Woodrow Wilson, featuring an original introduction by David Aikman

Selected Publications