Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of The Inquirer’s editorial board. Her column runs regularly in many other newspapers around the United States. Ms. Rubin made many visits to Hong Kong from the 1980s onward, interviewing pro-democracy leaders. Her last trip took place in 2019 during the student uprising when she covered the campus rebellions and interviewed Jimmy Lai and Joshua Wong. 

In 2017, Ms. Rubin was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2018 she won the Overseas Press Club award for best commentary on international affairs. She was also a Pulitzer finalist in 2001, for her columns on Israel and the Palestinians. In 2010 she received the Arthur Ross Award for distinguished analysis of foreign affairs from the American Academy of Diplomacy. In 2008 she was awarded the Edward Weintal prize for international reporting. She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq.

Ms. Rubin has special expertise on the Middle East, South Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe. She appears frequently on radio and television and in recent years has traveled repeatedly to Ukraine, China, Hong Kong, Israel, the West Bank, Russia, Europe, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. 

Before coming to The Inquirer in December 1983 she was the Middle East correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, covering Israel and the Arab world. Earlier, she was a national correspondent for The Monitor, covering election campaigns and national political and social issues. Prior to that she was a staff writer on American politics for The Economist of London. Ms. Rubin is currently a Senior Advisor to Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. 

In 1993, Ms. Rubin was a Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. In 1990 she was an exchange journalist at the Moscow News in Moscow. She spent 1975-6 as a fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University as a participant in the program for senior diplomats started by Henry Kissinger. In 1974-5, she was an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow in Cairo and Beirut.

She is a graduate of Smith College and The London School of Economics. In 2007 she was awarded the Smith College Medal for distinguished achievements by an alumna.