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.
The Danger of Debating Reparations for Slavery
Lance Morrow
Compensation for slavery is an inviting idea in principle but would be a nightmare in practice. Reparations, in current conditions, would not repair anything.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / May 3, 2019
Master of the Craft
Lance Morrow
In his new book, Robert Caro teaches the art of nonfiction writing.
Articles
City Journal / April 26, 2019
Politics as Cartooning: What’s Trump, Doc?
Lance Morrow
Understanding politicians as cartoons is a way to appreciate the surreal quality of 2019. No doubt the cartooning will become increasingly intense as the 2020 campaign unfolds.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / April 6, 2019
Healing the Divisions in Our Country
Lance Morrow
In his new book Love Your Enemies, Arthur C. Brooks beholds America’s 21st-century tribal feuds with a clear, intelligent eye and a hospitable attitude that is rightly focused on the spiritual dimensions of the problem.
Articles
The New York Times / April 3, 2019
Trump-Russia Made for Gripping Fiction
Lance Morrow
Witness is a term that is both religious and legal. The proper role of the journalist is that of witness—in both senses of the word—to the country’s re-creation. Honest witness requires humility, a virtue all but extinct in 21st-century media.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / March 27, 2019
Journalism Dies in Self-Importance
Lance Morrow
As Ted Koppel has recognized, today’s media embrace the darkness of their own biases.
Articles
City Journal / March 22, 2019
Shocked by Biased Journalism? Please.
Lance Morrow
The Democratic National Committee will regret its decision to bar Fox News from hosting any of its 2020 presidential primary debates.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / March 15, 2019
Jussie Smollett and the Hazards of Moral Sentimentality
Lance Morrow
Today’s media storytelling has perfected a genre of intensely sentimental and spontaneously generated folk tales, especially stories dealing with race and sexuality.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / March 2, 2019
America Is Torn Between Trump’s Fibs and Progressives’ Fantasies
Lance Morrow
President Trump works with huckster falsehoods—the flashy superlatives of a car salesman. The progressive left works with conceptual falsities. Voters in 2020 will decide which style of lies they prefer.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / February 15, 2019
The Longest Day for Trump’s Adversaries
Lance Morrow
In his State of the Union address, President Trump appeared presidential for seemingly the first time and dramatically advanced his chances for re-election in 2020.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / February 7, 2019
High School Morality Play
Lance Morrow
Today’s progressives place adolescents at the center of their moral imaginations, as if the moods of teenagers were the mirror of their most consequential thoughts.
Articles
City Journal / January 25, 2019
Save America from Aunt Sally
Lance Morrow
A democracy refreshes itself by alternating its political emphases. In this way, the American people remain approximately sane, and prevent themselves from becoming either totalitarian or bored. But a binary system will break up if the two stars fly too far apart—if their mutual gravity cannot hold them in tension.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / January 4, 2019