Barbara Crossette, a writer on foreign affairs and columnist for U.N. Wire, an independent online news service published by the National Journal, was The New York Times bureau chief at the United Nations from 1994 to 2001.  

She was earlier a Times correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia and a diplomatic reporter in Washington. 

She has also reported from Central America, the Caribbean and Canada, and been deputy foreign editor and senior editor in charge of the Times’ weekend news operations.

Before joining the newspaper in 1973, Ms. Crossette worked for The Evening and Sunday Bulletin in Philadelphia and The Birmingham Post in Birmingham, England.

In 1991, Ms. Crossette won the George Polk Award for foreign reporting for her coverage of the assassination in India of a former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

In 1998, she won the 25-year achievement award of The Silurians, a society of New York journalists, and the award for international reporting from InterAction, a coalition of more than 150 international nonprofit aid and development organizations.

In 1999, she received the Business Council of the United Nations’ Korn Ferry Award for outstanding reporting on the organization, and in 2003 the United Nations Correspondents’ Association’s lifetime achievement award.

Ms. Crossette is the author of India Facing the 21^st Century, published by Indiana University Press in 1993, and So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1995 and in paperback by Random House/Vintage Destinations in 1996.

The Great Hill Stations of Asia was published by Westview Press in 1998 and in paperback by Basic Books in 1999.

In 2000, she wrote a survey of India and Indian-American relations, India: Old Civilization in a New World, for the Foreign Policy Association in New York.

Ms. Crossette has been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and in 1980-81 was a Fulbright teaching fellow in journalism at Punjab University in Chandigarh, India.

In 1994, she was the Ferris Visiting Professor on Politics and the Press at Princeton University.

Since 2001, she has taught a seminar on writing on international affairs for Bard College.

In 2003, she led an advanced  workshop in journalism at the Royal University of Phnom Penh for writers and editors from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma.

She was named a Knight International Press Fellow in 2004 to work with newspapers and journalism organizations in Brazil.

Born in Philadelphia, Ms. Crossette received a B.A. in history and political science from Muhlenberg College in 1963. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Women’s Foreign Policy Group, and serves on the board of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.