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.
A Forbidden Word’s Lost Lessons
Lance Morrow
A professor is under investigation for accurately quoting James Baldwin.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / August 19, 2019
Darker Days Ahead?
Lance Morrow
The El Paso and Dayton shootings brought the 2020 presidential election, and America’s future, into sharp and disturbing focus.
Articles
City Journal / August 5, 2019
A Marriage of Man and Machine
Lance Morrow
Self-driving cars will ruin our connection to the metal beast.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / August 1, 2019
Neil Armstrong’s ‘Small Step’ Brought the Moon Down to Earth
Lance Morrow
Apollo 11 was the apogee of an era of dreams and the start of an age of division and small-mindedness.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / July 19, 2019
The Bus Back to the Future
Lance Morrow
It seemed a little odd that Kamala Harris brought up the long-ago subject of busing during a 2019 Democratic debate. Presidential candidates usually wish to deal in new ideas. Busing is a period piece.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / July 7, 2019
A Reckoning With Martin Luther King
Lance Morrow
A country without heroes becomes either savage or monstrously petty, and dull and mean.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / June 18, 2019
You Have the Right to Bare Arms, but Why Ink Them?
Lance Morrow
It is hard to see the sense in permanently committing one’s flesh to be the billboard of long-ago whims.
Articles
The Wall Street Journal / June 7, 2019
D-Day, and a Summer of Anniversaries
Lance Morrow
Always at the heart of America as a moral experiment has been the question of how to make the nation’s power virtuous. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the two—power and virtue—were neatly aligned.
Articles
City Journal / June 5, 2019
Outsmarted
Lance Morrow
The phone in our pockets sees and hears all.
Articles
City Journal / May 7, 2019
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