Nicholas Berthelot Lemann is an American writer and academic, and is the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus of the Faculty of Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. Lemann was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022.
Early life and education
Nicholas Lemann was born, raised, and educated in a Jewish family 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".
He was educated at Metairie Park Country Day School, 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.
On September 1, 2003, Lemann became dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. 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. He stepped down as dean in 2013, following two five-year terms.
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. From 2017 to early 2021, he was the director of Columbia World Projects.
Lemann is the author or editor of several books, including Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries (2026), 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. 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, they have a son and a daughter.
Bibliography
===Books===<!--Restore to list format?-->
{| class="wikitable"
!Title!!Year!!ISBN!!Publisher!!Subject matter!!Interviews, presentations, and reviews!!Comments
|-
|The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America||1991||||Knopf||Second Great Migration (African American)||Booknotes interview with Lemann on Promised Land, May 5, 1991, C-SPAN||Winner of the 1992 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.
|-
|The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy||1999||||Farrar, Straus and Giroux||Standardized testing||Presentation by Lemann on The Big Test, September 29, 1999, C-SPAN<br>"None of the Above" Review, by Andrew Sullivan, The New York Times, October 24, 1999.<br>"BOOKS OF THE TIMES; What's Wrong With the SAT and Its Elite Progeny" Review by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times, October 4, 1999||
|-
|Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War||2006||||Farrar, Straus and Giroux||Reconstruction era||"A Less Perfect Union Review by Sean Wilentz, in The New York Times, September 10, 2006<br>Audio interview with Lemann on Redemption conducted by Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times Book Review, September 10, 2006<br>First chapter of book, on The New York Times site.<br>After Words interview with Lemann on Redemption, November 11, 2006, C-SPAN||
|-
|Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream||2019||||Farrar, Straus and Giroux||Economy of the United States||"Author Discussion on the History of Modern American Politics and the Economy", featuring Lemann discussing Transaction Man and author Rick Perstein discussing his book Reaganland, September 27, 2020, C-SPAN||
|-
|Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries||2026||||Liveright||A memoir chronicling several generations of the Lemann family — German Jews who aspired to enter New Orleans high society in the face of antisemitism — and the author's subsequent embrace of the Jewish religion and rejection of his family's assimilation
|}
Essays and reporting
- October 2004 [http://www.slate.com/id/2107947/entry/2108055/] on Philip Roth's The Plot Against America
- September 2005 commentary on Hurricane Katrina
- August 2006 article on Citizen journalism, titled "Amateur Hour: Journalism Without Journalists"
- August 2007 commentary titled Rovian Ways on Karl Rove's resignation and legacy
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;Bibliography notes