David Greene was an American teenager growing up during the time the Soviet Union was falling. He remembers watching the news coverage and feeling that, surely, everyone in the world must want an American-style democracy and it was only a matter of time before every country decided to follow suit. Now, having spent two years as a correspondent for National Public Radio covering stories in Libya and from Ukraine to Siberia and another four years trekking across five continents while reporting on the White House, he sees how narrow his perspective was back then.

“I got the chance to meet so many people who opened my eyes to different desires and thirsts for different kinds of political systems and different instincts and different hopes, and that was really fascinating to me,” he said.

Greene now hosts NPR’s “Morning Edition” as well as NPR’s morning news podcast, “Up First.” While in Guam for the 25^th anniversary of Guam’s public radio station, KPRG, he spoke to the community on Feb. 1, 2019, as the 38^th speaker of the University of Guam’s Presidential Lecture Series, sharing defining moments in his career and how those moments have shaped the role he wants to play as a journalist going forward.

While based in Russia, Greene said he had many eye-opening discussions about politics. Even following a particular event where democratic principles had prevailed for the people, he found residents were still not sold on his argument for democracy.

“I realized that this is a much more complicated, nuanced conversation than I think I ever expected,” he said. “Those kinds of conversations and learning the layers of nuance beneath the oversimplified headlines … the world is so much more complicated.”

Regardless how complicated, the conversations were happening. “We were sitting there talking about politics and different political systems and having these disagreements over vodka and cured meats,” he said, “and it was so pleasant.”

Greene asked who we are in America today that it seems so difficult to have a civil discourse. Having those conversations in Russia began to shape the role he wanted to play as a journalist moving forward.

“Holding a government accountable, telling stories that are fair and truthful, fostering dialog and creating a space where people can disagree — I feel like that part of our mission as journalists is so much more important today than it ever has been,” Greene said.

He often has guests on his show who are controversial. Listeners send letters of disapproval, criticizing his interviews for being too easy, too difficult, or saying he shouldn’t even have had certain guests on the air. Regardless, he said, he is creating a space for dialog, where his guests can “confront something difficult together and not hide from it.”

“This is a really difficult and confusing time,” he said, “but I have that faith that we really can come to an understanding once we hear each other out … and always, but especially in these times, the more I can create those opportunities to listen to one another in a civil way and to share views and to challenge one another and to work stuff out together … I’ll feel like I am doing my job.”

Watch David Greene’s lecture here.

View photos from the lecture here.