AMERICAN POLARIZATIONS D
Participant Backgrounds
Linda Greenhouse spent 40 years at the New York Times, the last 30 covering the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2009, she embarked on a new career, teaching full time at Yale Law School and writing a biweekly op ed column for the Times web site. She is the author of five books, the most recent a memoir, “Just a Journalist,” published in 2017 by Harvard University Press. She served on the Harvard Board of Overseers from 2009-2015 and is currently president of the American Philosophical Society.
Laura Shapiro, who finds it a little weird to be writing about herself in the third person, was one of the founders of The Real Paper, a Cambridge-based alternative weekly that flourished, more or less, through the 1970s. She covered dance, books, and especially the women’s movement; and it was this last that became her chief fetish. Later she spent fifteen years at Newsweek, where she began to focus on food -- not such a departure from the women’s movement as it may seem, since she believed then and still does that if you’re looking at the kitchen, you are looking at women whether you see them or not. She’s published four books about women and culinary history, most recently What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories, which came out in 2017 and will soon appear in paperback.
Andrew Tobias served as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee from 1999 through 2017. A contributor to New York Magazine, Esquire, and Time, among others over the years, his books include The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, The Invisible Bankers: Everything the Insurance Industry Never Wanted You to Know, and The Best Little Boy In the World. His software, Managing Your Money, pre-dated Quicken. He claims to have invented (but forgotten to patent) the password hint.
After a 7 year tour of Washington DC (with the US Navy, on the National Security Council staff, and staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee), Peter Zimmerman returned to Harvard to the Kennedy School for graduate study. He never left. Over the past 40 years, he contributed to the Kennedy School’s development as an administrator and member of the faculty and he continues teaching in retirement.