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| Victor Navasky |
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| Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation, was the magazine's editor from 1978 to 1995 and publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005. In 1994, while on a year's leave of absence, he served first as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and then as a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University.
Before coming to The Nation he was an editor at The New York Times Magazine and wrote a monthly column about the publishing business ("In Cold Print") for the New York Times Book Review. He is the author of Kennedy Justice (Atheneum, 1977), the American Book Award winner Naming Names and, most recently, A Matter of Opinion. He is co-author with Christopher Cerf of The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation, now in its second edition.
Navasky has also served as a Guggenheim Fellow, a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and Ferris Visiting Professor of Journalism at Princeton. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities and has contributed articles and reviews to numerous magazines and journals of opinion. He is a graduate of Yale Law School (1959) and Swarthmore College (1954), where he was Phi Beta Kappa with high honors in the social sciences.
In addition to his Nation responsibilities, Navasky is also director of the George Delacorte Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University and a regular commentator on the public radio program Marketplace.
Mr. Navasky, who has three children, lives in New York City with his wife, Anne. He serves on the boards of the Authors Guild, PEN and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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| Katrina vanden Heuvel |
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| Katrina vanden Heuvel has been The Nation's editor since 1995 and publisher since 2005.
She is the co-editor of Taking Back America-And Taking Down The Radical Right (NationBooks, 2004) and, most recently, editor of The Dictionary of Republicanisms, (NationBooks, 2005)
She is also co-editor (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (Norton, 1989) and editor of The Nation: 1865-1990, and the collection A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.
She is a frequent commentator on American and international politics on MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.
Her weblog for thenation.com is "Editor's Cut."
She is a recipient of Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award for her article, "Right-to-Lifers Hit Russia." The special issue she conceived and edited, "Gorbachev's Soviet Union," was awarded New York University's 1988 Olive Branch Award. Vanden Heuvel was also co-editor of Vyi i Myi, a Russian-language feminist newsletter.
She has received awards for public service from numerous groups, including The Liberty Hill Foundation, The Correctional Association and The Association for American-Russian Women. In 2003, she received the New York Civil Liberties Union's Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right of Privacy. She is also the recipient of The American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee's 2003 "Voices of Peace" award. Vanden Heuvel is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations, and she also serves on the board of The Institute for Women's Policy Research, The Institute for Policy Studies, The World Policy Institute, The Correctional Association of New York and The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.
She is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, and she lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
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| Julian Bond |
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| From his college days, Julian Bond has been an active participant in the movements for civil rights, economic justice, and peace and an aggressive spokesman for the disinherited.
He is Chairman Emeritus of the NAACP and a professor at American University and the University of Virginia.
As an activist who has faced jail for his convictions, as a veteran of more than twenty years of service in the Georgia General Assembly, as a writer, teacher, and lecturer, Bond has been on the cutting edge of social change since he was a college student leading sit-in demonstrations in Atlanta in 1960.
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| Kai Bird |
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| Kai Bird's most recent book, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, was released by Scribner on April 20, 2010. This book is a meld of personal memoir and history, fusing his early life in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt with an intimate account of the American experience in the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli tragedy.
He is the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Duff Cooper Prize for History in London. He wrote The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment (1992) and The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy & William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (1998). He is also co-editor with Lawrence Lifschultz of Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (1998). He is the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation's Study Center, Bellagio, Italy and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a contributing editor of The Nation. He lives in Kathmandu, Nepal with his wife and son.
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| Jessica Valenti |
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| Jessica Valenti - named one of the Top 100 Inspiring Women in the world by The Guardian - is the Founding Executive Editor of Feministing.com, and author of three books: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, He's a Stud, She's a Slut...and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, and The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women. She is also the editor of the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian (UK), The American Prospect, Ms. magazine, Salon and Bitch magazine.
Jessica is a widely sought after speaker who gives dozens of speeches annually at universities and organizations in the U.S. and abroad. She received her Masters degree in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University, where she is a part-time lecturer. Jessica lives in Sunnyside, Queens with her husband and daughter.
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| Van Jones |
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| Founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Former Green Jobs Adviser in the Obama White House, and Author of The Green Collar Economy. |
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| John Nichols |
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| John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.
Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Outfoxed," and in the documentaries Joan Sekler's "Unprecedented," Matt Kohn's "Call It Democracy" and Robert Pappas's "Orwell Rolls in his Grave." The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA] and dozens of other organizations.
Nichols is the author of The Genius of Impeachment (The New Press); a critically acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (The New Press); and a best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (The New Press), which has recently been published in French and Arabi. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: "At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift-a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history-that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country."
With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books It's the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories), Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press) and, most recently, The Death and Life of American Journalism (Nation Books). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.
Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."
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| Jeremy Scahill |
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| Jeremy Scahill is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill has won numerous awards for his reporting, including the prestigious George Polk Award, which he won twice. While a correspondent for Democracy Now!, Scahill reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Traveling around the hurricane zone in the wake of Katrina, Scahill exposed the presence of Blackwater forces in New Orleans and his reporting sparked a Congressional inquiry and an internal Department of Homeland Security investigation. He has appeared on ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS's The NewsHour, Bill Moyers Journal and is a frequent guest on other radio and TV programs nationwide. Scahill also serves as an election correspondent for HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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| Jodie Evans |
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Jodie Evans has been a peace, environmental, women's rights and social justice activist for forty years. She has traveled extensively to war zones, including Afghanistan, Gaza and Iraq, promoting and learning about peaceful resolution to conflict. She served in the administration of Governor Jerry Brown and ran his presidential campaign. She has published two books, "Stop the Next War Now" and "Twilight of Empire," and has produced several documentary films, including the Oscar-nominated "The Most Dangerous Man in America" and Howard Zinn's "The People Speak." Jodie co-founded CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the board chair of Women's Media Center and sits on many other boards, including the Hereditary Disease Foundation, Rainforest Action Network, Drug Policy Alliance, and Sisterhood is Global Institute. She is the mother of three.
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| Medea Benjamin |
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| Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of both CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 30 years. Described as "one of America's most committed - and most effective - fighters for human rights" by New York Newsday, and called "one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement" by the Los Angeles Times, Medea was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. In 2010 she received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Since the September 11, 2001 tragedy, Medea has been working to promote a U.S. foreign policy that would respect human rights and gain us allies instead of contributing to violence and undermining our international reputation. She has travelled and written extensively about Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel and Palestine. She has led five delegations to Gaza, bringing humanitarian aid.
A former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and World Health Organization, Benjamin is the author/editor of eight books. Her articles appear regularly in outlets such as The Huffington Post, CommonDreams, Alternet, TruthOut, the Daily Kos and OpEd News.
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| Steve Earle |
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| Stephen Earle was born on Jan. 17, 1955, in Fort Monroe, Va. He grew up in Schertz, Texas, a community 17 miles north of San Antonio. At the age of 11, Earle got his first guitar and learned to play it quickly enough to take third place in the Schertz school district's annual talent show.
At 14, Earle left home for Houston to stay with his 19-year-old uncle, Nick Fain, who encouraged him to continue his guitar playing. Soon after, Earle met hard-living songwriter Townes Van Zandt, who inspired him to make music his career. Earle later said of Van Zandt, "He was a real good teacher and a real bad role model." At 19, Earle moved to Nashville. While struggling to make it in the music industry, the young hopeful paid the bills by doing odd jobs. "I've never had a job longer than three months in my life," he said. "I've always led a bohemian lifestyle. I have framed houses, worked on oil rigs, worked on shrimp boats and in restaurants, but it was different for me because I knew I was always going to get out."
In Nashville, Steve played in various bands to support himself. He made his first recording in 1975 on Guy Clark's Old No. 1 album, playing bass and singing backup on the cut "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train." Earle eventually wrote songs that were recorded by some major artists. His first publishing deal was with Sunbury Dunbar (a division of RCA), where he earned $75 a week as a staff writer. He almost had his song "Mustang Wine" recorded by Elvis Presley, but Presley failed to show up for the scheduled session. The song was later recorded by Carl Perkins. Johnny Lee had a No. 14 hit in 1982 with "When You Fall in Love," a song Earle co-wrote with John Scott Sherrill.
Earle has been an outspoken and tireless opponent of capital punishment. His "Ellis Unit One" is featured on the 1996 soundtrack of the film Dead Man Walking. In recent years, Earle also has written and performed poetry and fiction. He presented excerpts from his works in progress at the 2000 New Yorker Festival and published a short-story anthology Doghouse Roses in 2001. He also stirred up controversy with the song "John Walker's Blues," about John Walker Linde, an American who many considered a traitor for joining the Taliban. The biography Hardcore Troubador: The Life and Death of Steve Earle was published in 2003.
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| Allison Moorer |
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| Making sense of things isn't always easy. Singer/songwriter Allison Moorer knows this, for sifting through life's various complexities can make for a good song and even better story. On "Sorrow (Don't Come Around)," one of the starkly candid songs on Moorer's forthcoming effort, Crows, she hints at a hidden optimism that sometimes is ignored or forgotten. "I gotta turn you away so I can keep this hope alive/You're tapping on the window but I won't let you inside/Maybe you'll give up and find somebody else tonight/I draw the curtains, say a prayer and turn out the light."
Nearly 12 years ago, Moorer made an unforgettable introduction with her contribution of the thoughtful ballad, "A Soft Place to Fall," to the soundtrack to Robert Redford-directed drama, 1998's A Horse Whisperer, which later earned her an Academy Award nomination. From there, Moorer went on to carefully craft a long-lasting career with her impressive debut LP, Alabama Song, while challenging herself to always look inward for an even deeper meaning - which she certainly explored on Miss Fortune (2002) and The Duel (2004). In 2007, Moorer received a Grammy nomination for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for "Days Aren't Long Enough," a song co-written with husband, singer-songwriter Steve Earle.
Venturing into a creative world beyond music was merely natural, too; that fall, Moorer went on to appear in the stage production of Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's "Rebel Voices," a theatrical adaptation based on their best-selling book, Voices of a People's History of the United States. And in late 2009, Moorer appears in The History Channel's The People Speak, a film inspired by Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which also features Bob Dylan, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Springsteen, Danny Glover, Matt Damon, John Legend, Josh Brolin and more.
"[The process of recording Crows] surprised me every step of the way because I felt like I was writing on a level that I hadn't before," Moorer says. "I felt like I was being the most open I'd ever been. I don't know if that's age or confidence or what, but after all this time, I'm starting to feel like I know what I'm doing as a singer. Songwriting is very mysterious to me. I know how songs work but I don't always understand how they come to be."
Last year's covers collection, Mockingbird - which found Moorer covering female artists like Nina Simone, Patti Smith and Gillian Welch - was her way of returning to a place where it all began. "I had made what felt like a lot of records in a short amount of time, and I needed to step back from the process of writing a record, recording a record, and touring a record. I needed to change it up a little bit, so I essentially sent myself back to school," explains Moorer. "When you're learning how to play and sing, one of the ways you do that is by learning other people's songs. No one is born with their own songs, so that's how you learn to write." Thus, with that refreshing break Moorer headed into the House of David Studio in Nashville to record the 13-song Crows in just four days. Here, she's found humor in darkness and sifts through life's complexities for her richest, most soul-bearing effort yet.
"I've always been guilty of making music for myself. The older I get, the more I do it. I'm just trying to turn myself on because if I don't do that then I certainly can't expect to turn anyone else on," says Moorer.
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| William Greider |
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| William Greider's 40-year career as a reporter and best-selling author brought him in close proximity to very powerful people, from the White House to Wall Street, from major multinational corporations to the Federal Reserve and its awesome governing powers. Yet Greider's distinctive quality is his critical perspective. He examines power - who has it, who doesn't - in behalf of the ordinary Americans who are distant from the inner circles of America's governing elites.
He is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation. His career has spanned newspapers small and large, magazines, public television and books. He writes about capitalism and about democracy and explains how these two value systems are in collision.
Greider joined the national staff of the Washington Post in 1968 and was a correspondent for a dozen years, eventually becoming the assistant managing editor directing national coverage. He also edited Outlook, the Post's Sunday opinion section, and wrote a weekly column called "Against the Grain."
In 1981, he wrote a controversial account of the Reagan administration titled "The Education of David Stockman," based on a series of private interviews with Reagan's budget director. Published in the Atlantic Monthly, the article revealed the fallacies and contradictions of Reaganomics in intimate detail and caused a sensation among Washington politicians and policy makers. An expanded version became Greider's first book, The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans (Dutton 1982).
Next Greider made a surprising career move. He left the prestigious Washington Post and elite circles in Washington to join Rolling Stone, the magazine of popular culture. For the next 17 years, Greider wrote a regular political column for Rolling Stone while he produced a string of best-selling books.
Jumping from Washington insider to writing for a much larger national audience of young readers was a crucial step, Greider said, in developing his own critical perspective. "I learned how to explain the complexities of politics and government with clarity and without the condescension that's typical of the mainstream media," he explained. "Newspapers talk down to average readers, without knowing it. They do not respect the intelligence of ordinary citizens or explain the deeper context of power politics in ways people could understand. I made a personal commitment to do that for them in Rolling Stone and my books.
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