Columbia Journalism School Dean Emeritus and Professor Nicholas Lemann
Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings have further fanned the flames of political polarization and generated a renewed debate about the proper role of the nation’s high court in our system of government. With the political poles reversed, the same debates took place in the 1950s—especially in Louisiana—about the Supreme Court’s decisions in civil rights cases. As the nation’s high court prepares to hear a major challenge on another racial issue, affirmative action in university admissions, questions about the Court, politics, and racial justice are once again pressing.
At the 2022 Judge Alvin B. and Janice G. Rubin Visiting Professor Lecture on Wednesday, Sept. 14, Columbia Journalism School Dean Emeritus and Professor Nicholas Lemann will touch on these issues in his lecture, “The Supreme Court and Civil Rights: the 1950s and 2020s.” Drawing on some previously unpublished material, Lemann will revisit the major jurisprudence of the Civil Rights Movement, including, but not limited to, the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision leading to school desegregation.
The lecture will take place at 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 14 in the Noland Laborde Room at the Lod Cook Alumni Center. A reception will follow the lecture, and parking will be available onsite at the Lod Cook Alumni Center for attendees. The event is free and open to the public.
Born, raised, and educated in New Orleans, Lemann began his journalism career as a 17-year-old writer for a Crescent City alternative weekly newspaper, the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1976, where he concentrated in American history and literature and was president of the Harvard Crimson. After graduation, his extensive and impressive journalism career included stops 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 a staff writer and then Washington correspondent.
In September 2003, Lemann became dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and remained in the position through two five-year terms, stepping down in 2013. Today, he teaches there. He also directs Columbia Global Reports, a book publishing venture. From 2017 to 2021, he was the founding director of Columbia World Projects, a new institution that implements academic research outside the university.
Lemann continues to contribute to The New Yorker as a staff writer. His books include “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), which helped lead to a major reform of the SAT; “The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America” (1991), which won several book prizes.
Lemann currently serves on the boards of the Authors Guild, the Knight First Amendment Institute, the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company and the Russell Sage Foundation. He is a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2019.
The Judge Alvin B. and Janice G. Rubin Visiting Professor of Law Program provides funds to bring outstanding legal scholars to the LSU Law Center.
