This semester the Shorenstein Center will welcome five new fellows to campus to conduct research and engage with students and the Harvard Kennedy School community.
Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs says, “We are excited to welcome such a fascinating group of Fall fellows to the Shorenstein center, with a broad range of experience across media, policy and politics. We look forward to supporting their work even as they enhance and expand our understanding of this challenging environment.”
The Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellowship brings high-profile figures at the forefront of media, politics, and policy to the Kennedy School to work on timely issues. This year’s Walter Shorenstein Fellow is:
Adam Moss, editor-in-chief of New York Magazine from 2004–2019. During his 15-year tenure he oversaw an ambitious digital expansion of parent company New York Media, which included five digital publications in addition to New York: Vulture, The Cut, Intelligencer, The Strategist, and Grub Street, each of which were created from scratch and collectively reach an audience of 50 million visitors each month. Under Moss’s leadership New York and nymag.com won 41 National Magazine Awards. Before joining New York Magazine, Moss was the editor of the New York Times Magazine, as well as assistant managing editor of the paper, overseeing the magazine, Book Review, culture and style. Moss was founding editor of 7 Days, a New York weekly magazine, and before that, he worked at Esquire magazine in a variety of positions. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College, his alma mater, and is a member of the Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame.
While at the Shorenstein Center, Moss will lead a group project that focuses on building a better political media landscape.
The A.M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence Program brings professional nonfiction writers to the Shorenstein Center and provides an opportunity for them to conduct research and work on a specific project, as well as participate in Shorenstein Center events and interact with a community of scholars and students. This bi-annual residential fellowship is supported by a number of generous donors (for the complete list visit shorensteincenter.org/fellowships/rosenthal-program/). This year’s A.M. Rostenthal Writer-in-Residence is:
Tara Westover, author of Educated. Tara Westover received her BA from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She then returned to the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014. Her first book, Educated (2018), is a memoir of Westover’s life growing up with her survivalist family in rural Idaho and her journey to education. It debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and has remained on the list for more than a year. It was a finalist for several national awards, including the L.A. Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and President Obama and Bill Gates both recommended Educated on their annual reading lists. The American Booksellers Association voted Educated the Nonfiction Book of the Year, and Time Magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2019.
While at the Shorenstein Center, Westover will write, teach student workshops, and interact with the Harvard community.
The Joan Shorenstein Fellowship is a four-month residential program in which Fellows conduct research culminating in an original piece of scholarship focused on the intersection of media, politics, and public policy. They also engage with the Harvard community through public events and courses. The fellowship is awarded to working journalists, politicians, policymakers, and academics working in the fields of media, politics, and public policy. The Fall 2019 Joan Shorenstein Fellows are:
Brandi Collins-Dexter, Senior Campaign Director at Color Of Change, where she oversees the media, culture and economic justice team. She has led a number of successful and highly visible campaigns for corporate and government accountability and has also worked extensively with Silicon Valley companies on key corporate policy changes. Collins-Dexter has testified in front of congress on the issue of online privacy, and is a regular commentator in the media on racial justice and tech. While at the Shorenstein Center, Collins-Dexter will write a paper on the digital ecosystem and how it has forever altered the political, economic, sociological and psychological ways in which we engage offline.
Jane Perlez, bureau chief for The New York Times in Beijing. She has been a long time foreign correspondent for The Times, serving in East Africa, Central Europe, Southeast Asia, and Pakistan. She was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan. She is married to Raymond Bonner, former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, and author. While at the Shorenstein Center, Perlez will write about how the Chinese and American governments treat each other’s reporters as each side strives to describe, in very different ways, the world’s most important strategic relationship.
Kathy Pham, computer scientist, product leader, and researcher on ethics and technology. She has held roles in product management, software engineering, data science, and leadership in the private, non-profit, and public sectors. Her work has spanned Google, IBM, Harris Healthcare, and the federal government at the United States Digital Service at the White House, where she was a founding product and engineering member. She is a Fellow at Mozilla co-leading the Responsible Computer Science Challenge, and Affiliate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center where she leads the Ethical Tech working group. Most recently, she founded Product and Society, and The Ethical Tech Collective. While at the Shorenstein Center she will work closely with the Technology and Social Change Research Project.
