Nicholas Lemann served as Dean of Columbia Journalism School from 2003-13.
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During his deanship, the School completed its first capital fundraising campaign, added 20 members to its full-time faculty, started its first new professional degree program since the 1930s, and launched significant new initiatives in investigative reporting, digital journalism, and executive leadership for news organizations.
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Now Dean Emeritus and Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism, he also directs Columbia Global Reports, a book publishing venture. From 2017-2021 he was founding director of Columbia World Projects, a new institution that implements academic research outside the university.
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Lemann is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and is 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, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and The American Academy of Political & Social Science. His latest book, “Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream,” was published in September 2019 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.