The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, based at Harvard Kennedy School, is pleased to announce the appointment of its spring 2018 fellows, and the A.M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence.

“This semester we will be joined by experienced journalists and practitioners who focus on some of today’s most pressing issues: race relations, the urban/rural divide, the role of algorithms in society, and climate change, among other topics,” said Shorenstein Center Director Nicco Mele.

The A.M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence program brings nonfiction writers to Harvard to work on writing projects, teach student workshops, and interact with the Harvard community. Jelani Cobb will be the A.M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence for spring 2018. He is the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at Columbia University and a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he writes about race, politics, history, and culture.

Joan Shorenstein Fellows spend the academic semester researching and writing a paper, participating in events, and interacting with students, faculty, and the Harvard community. The spring 2018 Joan Shorenstein Fellows are:

Hossein Derakhshan is a joint fellow with the MIT Media Lab and the Shorenstein Center for Spring 2018. He is an Iranian-Canadian writer and researcher who focuses on the long-term socio-political impacts of media and technology. In the early 2000s he introduced blogging to Iran which earned him the title of “blogfather.” He was imprisoned in Tehran for six years for his writings and online activism. Derakhshan is the author of The Web We Have to Save, a co-author of Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policymaking, and he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, Libération, MIT Technology Review, Wired, and other outlets. While at the Shorenstein Center he will focus on alternative futures for online and offline journalism, information disorder, and alternative algorithms... >>>