Nicholas Lemann

External video
"Nicholas Lemann: Growing Up Jewish in the American South", Big Think

Nicholas Lemann was born, raised, and educated in a Jewish family[4] in New Orleans. He describes his family's faith as a "kind of super-Reform Judaism" where there were "no kosher laws, no bar mitzvahs, no tallit, no kippot".[5]

He was educated at Metairie Park Country Day School,[6] a private school in New Orleans, from which he graduated in 1972, followed by Harvard University, where he studied American history and literature, and was president of The Harvard Crimson, where he wrote the Brass Tacks column, and from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1976.[6]

Lemann began his journalism career as a 17-year-old writer for an alternative weekly, the Vieux Carre Courier, in his home city of New Orleans. In 1975, amid reports of mass murder in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, Lemann wrote, "I continue to support the Khmer Rouge in its principles and goals but I have to admit that I deplore the way they are going about it."[7] After graduation, he worked at the Washington Monthly, as an associate editor and then managing editor; at Texas Monthly, as an associate editor and then executive editor; at The Washington Post, as a member of the national staff; at The Atlantic Monthly, as national correspondent; and at The New Yorker, as staff writer and then Washington correspondent.

On September 1, 2003, Lemann became dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.[8] During Lemann's time as dean, the Journalism School launched and completed its first capital fundraising campaign, added 20 members to its full-time faculty, built a student center, started its first new professional degree program since the 1930s, and launched initiatives in investigative reporting, digital journalism, executive leadership for news organizations, and other areas.[9] He stepped down as dean in 2013, following two five-year terms.[10]

In 2015, Lemann launched Columbia Global Reports, a university-funded publishing imprint that produces four to six ambitious works of journalism and analysis a year, each on a different underreported story in the world.[11] From 2017 to early 2021, he was the director of Columbia World Projects.[12]

Lemann is the author or editor of several books, including Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream (2019), Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (2006); The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (1999); and The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1991), which won several book prizes. He has written widely for such publications as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and Slate; worked in documentary television with Blackside, Inc., Frontline, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC; and lectured at many universities.

Lemann serves on the boards of directors of the Authors Guild, the National Academy of Sciences' Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, and the Academy of Political Science, and is a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2010.[9]

Lemann has been married twice. His first wife was Dominique Alice Browning, who later became an editor in chief of House & Garden. They married on May 20, 1983,[13] have two sons, Alexander and Theodore, and later divorced. His second wife is Judith Anne Shulevitz, a columnist for Slate, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Republic. Married on November 7, 1999,[14] they have a son and a daughter.[15]

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• A film clip "The Open Mind - "The further education of a journalist", Part I (2006)" is available for viewing at the Internet Archive
• A film clip "The Open Mind - "The further education of a journalist", Part II (2006) is available for viewing at the Internet Archive