Lance Morrow
Henry Grunwald Senior Fellow
Lance Morrow is the Henry Grunwald Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His work focuses on the moral and ethical dimensions of public events, including developments in regard to freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and political correctness on American campuses, with a view to the future consequences of such suppressions.
Lance Morrow is the Henry Grunwald Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His work focuses on the moral and ethical dimensions of public events, including developments in regard to freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and political correctness on American campuses, with a view to the future consequences of such suppressions.
Morrow’s award-winning essays, appearing in Time, Smithsonian, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other publications, have offered probing analyses of American culture and politics in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century.
Morrow wrote about every presidential election from Nixon to Obama, wars from Vietnam to Bosnia to the Middle East. Morrow was the author of more than 150 cover stories for Time, including eight Man of the Year articles.
He is currently writing a book about Henry Luce and his magazines’ role in shaping American culture and opinions in the middle third of the 20th century. Morrow is a strong believer in the role of journalism in sustaining freedom and democracy.
The son of an editor of the old Saturday Evening Post and of a Washington columnist for the Knight syndicate, Morrow grew up in Washington. He attended Gonzaga High School, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. For nine years (1996-2005), he was a University Professor at Boston University, where he taught presidential history and the art of the essay.
The author of seven books, Morrow is a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award—the first for his original coverage in essay form of American cultural affairs, the second for his essay that was part of Time‘s special coverage of September 11th.
Morrow’s study of the question of evil, arising among other things from his travel in the Bosnian war zone with Elie Wiesel, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. Later, he turned the article into a critically acclaimed book—Evil: An Investigation.
How We Think About Hell
Lance Morrow
Has the old idea, fire and brimstone through all eternity, gone out of business?
Articles
Wall Street Journal / March 7, 2024
Biden, Trump and American Vanity
Lance Morrow
The old WASP elites often had terrible judgment, but we should miss their ideals of leadership and service.
Articles
Wall Street Journal / February 22, 2024
Black History Month Is More Complicated Than It Seems
Lance Morrow
Celebrate the story of survival and liberation, but beware dwelling too much on suffering and grievance.
Articles
Wall Street Journal / February 16, 2024
Can Harvard Learn Anything From Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Lance Morrow
A university should be a home for those who seek truth, not a madrassa of the progressive left.
Articles
Wall Street Journal / January 9, 2024
Trump vs. the Woke: Let the People Decide
Lance Morrow
Both might be disqualified as a threat to democracy. Leaving it up to the voters seems the only option.
Articles
Wall Street Journal / January 2, 2024
America Feels Like a Codependent Household
Lance Morrow
America feels like an alcoholic household—crazy with grievance, accusation, irrational rage, screaming in the middle of the night. The children lie in the dark, wide-eyed, listening.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / December 25, 2023
Keeper of Christmas
Lance Morrow
I dismissed the story of Scrooge as a seasonal cliché—an item of nineteenth-century kitsch. But David, a nineteenth-century sort of man, taught me to respect it —especially Dickens’s actual 1843 novella, the written version rather than one of the films.
Articles
City Journal / December 24, 2023
The New Antisemitism Is the Oldest Kind
Lance Morrow
This isn’t the midcentury ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ variety. It’s the return of pure hatred of the Jews.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / December 3, 2023
To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth
Lance Morrow
He left behind millions of words in often-distinguished books that are sweeping and grandly objective, sometimes, yet also self-exonerating.
Articles
City Journal / November 30, 2023