Thomas Byrne Edsall (born August 22, 1941) is an American journalist and academic. He is best known for his weekly opinion column for The New York Times, Previously, he worked as a reporter for The Providence Journal and for The Baltimore Sun, and as a correspondent for The New Republic. In addition, he spent 25 years covering national politics for the Washington Post. He held the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Chair at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism until 2014.

Early life and family

Edsall was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Linn Edsall, a market research executive, and Katherine Byrne, a museum executive. Edsall is the grandson of David Linn Edsall, who served as Dean of the Harvard Medical School from 1918 to 1935. He is the nephew of John Tileston Edsall, a noted protein scientist and professor at Harvard University and Geoffrey Edsall, the former president of the American Association of Immunologists. He attended Brown University before receiving his B.A. from Boston University in 1966.

Career

Edsall served as a VISTA volunteer from 1966 to 1967 and he wrote for The Providence Journal in 1965. Edsall covered politics for The Baltimore Sun from 1967 to 1981; and he covered national politics for the Washington Post from 1981 to 2006. He was the political editor of the Huffington Post from 2007 to 2009, a correspondent for The New Republic from 2006 to 2013 and for the National Journal from 2006 to 2007. In November and December 2006, Edsall was a guest columnist for the print edition of the New York Times Op-Ed page. From 2006 to 2014, Edsall served as the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Public Affairs Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he continues to teach in an adjunct capacity. From 2011 to the present he has been a weekly opinion columnist for the New York Times. He makes occasional TV and radio appearances on CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, PBS, FOX, and NPR.

Personal life

Edsall is married and lives in New York and Washington, D.C., with his wife, Mary (daughter of Karl Deutsch), with whom he co-authored the book Chain Reaction, a 1992 Pulitzer Prize finalist in general nonfiction. The couple has one daughter, Alexandra, a graduate of Harvard Law School and former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Awards and fellowships

Works