Staff Index
USA TODAY's Opinion columnists
USA TODAY publishes columns by an assortment of writers, including a weekly feature by DeWayne Wickham, as well as pieces by members of our Board of Contributors.
The Board, which was launched in 1996, is composed of more than 25 contributing writers, whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are. The writers – many of them well-known columnists, authors and thinkers – come from all parts of the USA. While some of the writers have changed over the years, the concept remains the same: providing readers with insights into how issues and events impact their lives and culture.
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Souheila Al-Jadda
Souheila Al-Jadda is a Peabody award-winning television producer and journalist on Link TV.
Expertise: Islam, American Muslims, women's rights and Middle East politics.
Background: Al-Jadda is a global expert in the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. She is on the board of directors of Illume Magazine, an award-winning, independent Muslim magazine. Before joining Link TV, she worked for four years as a legislative assistant for U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.
Websites: Souheila.com; Al-Jadda, a Muslim, also blogs on an interfaith "diablogue" (dialogue + blog) with a Jewish colleague, David Michaelis.
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Ross K. Baker
Ross K. Baker is professor of political science at New Jersey's Rutgers University.
Expertise: Politics, Congress, presidential history.
Background: Baker was senior adviser to Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., in 2000, and filled the same position with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in 2004. More recently, he was Scholar-in-Residence in the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. He was a research associate at the Brookings Institution before landing at Rutgers. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Books: The 4th edition of House & Senate (2008); Strangers on a Hill (2007).
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Lionel Beehner
Lionel Beehner is a fellow with the Truman National Security Project and a PhD candidate.
Expertise: Foreign policy, International law.
Background: Beehner previously worked as a senior writer for the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is currently a term member. He is a contributor to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The (London) Guardian, Foreign Affairs and Slate, and teaches an op-ed writing course at Mediabistro.com. He has reported from Iraq, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Bosnia and other post-conflict zones. His doctoral thesis will focus on violent non-state actors and the use of force.
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Alex Berezow
Alex B. Berezow is the founding editor of RealClearScience and co-host of the RealClearScience podcast.
Expertise: Science
Background: Berezow holds a PhD in microbiology from the University of Washington. His work has appeared in CNN, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, New Scientist, Los Angeles Times, and Salon, among several other outlets. He lives in Seattle.
Books: Science Left Behind (2012).
Website: AlexBerezow.com
Social Networks: Follow him on Twitter @AlexBerezow
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Louise Branson
Louise Branson is a journalist and author.
Expertise: International issues, U.S. foreign policy, American life.
Background: Former USA TODAY editorial writer Louise Branson was the London Sunday Times correspondent in Moscow, Beijing and the Balkans. Her work has appeared in major publications around the world. Branson speaks six foreign languages. She has lived and worked in, or reported from, more than 25 countries, among them Britain, Israel, France, Serbia, and Uganda. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her next book will be an international thriller.
Books: Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant, Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin.
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Don Campbell
Don Campbell is a writer who lives in Dayton, Ohio.
Expertise: National politics, Congress.
Background: Campbell has spent more than 30 years in journalism, including nearly two decades as a Washington reporter, editor and columnist for Gannett Newspapers and USA TODAY. He also served as director of the Washington Journalism Center and of a fellowship program for journalists newly assigned to Washington. He has taught journalism at Northwestern University, the University of Oregon, Arizona State University and Emory University in Atlanta.
Books: Inside the Beltway: A Guide to Washington Reporting (2003).
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Katherine Chretien
Katherine Chretien is an internist who focuses on inpatient care and is an associate professor of medicine at George Washington University.
Expertise: Medicine, health care, parenting, military families
Background: Chretien practices hospital medicine at the Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center and helps train the next generation of doctors. She is nationally known for her research on social media and medicine. She writes a humor column on parenting at Momicillin.com and previously was a freelance humor writer for Disney. Chretien is a graduate of Brown University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and completed internal medicine training at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She and her husband, an active-duty Navy officer, have three children.
Social Networks: Follow her on Twitter @MotherinMed
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Ted C. Fishman
Ted C. Fishman is a longtime author, freelance magazine and newspaper writer and speaker.
Expertise: International and national finance and the economy — particularly how big global economic trends bear on people's everyday lives.
Background: Fishman's work has appeared in many prominent publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Harper's, Esquire, USA TODAY, National Geographic, GQ, The Times of London, Money, Worth and Inc. His commentaries have been featured on Public Radio International's This American Life and American Public Media's Marketplace. He is also a former floor trader and member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he ran his own trading firm. He has lived and worked in Japan and Indonesia.
Books: China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World (2005).
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James Alan Fox
James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University in Boston.
Expertise: Violence, Crime and Justice
Background: Fox has published 18 books, dozens of journal and magazine articles, and hundreds of freelance columns in newspapers around the country, primarily in the areas of multiple murder, youth crime, school and campus violence, workplace violence, and capital punishment. He also writes the “Crime and Punishment” blog for the Boston Globe. Fox often gives keynotes, presentations before Congress and other elected officials, and expert testimony for criminal and civil proceedings. Fox has worked on criminal investigations surrounding serial and mass murder cases and served as a visiting fellow with the Bureau of Justice Statistics focusing on homicide patterns and trends.
Books: Extreme Killing (2012); The Will to Kill (2012); Violence and Security on Campus (2010), among others
Website: JamesAlanFox.com
Social Networks: Follow him on Twitter @JamesAlanFox
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Jonah Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and editor-at-large of National Review Online.
Expertise: Politics, culture, foreign affairs.
Background: Goldberg previously served as a columnist for The Times of London, Brill's Content and The American, the journal of the American Enterprise Institute. His writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Commentary, The New Yorker, Food and Wine, and numerous other publications. He is currently a Fox News contributor and previously served as analyst for CNN.
Books: Liberal Facism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change.
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Nick Jans
Nick Jans is an award-winning writer on Alaska.
Expertise: Alaska, environment, natural history, hunting, politics, education.
Background: Jans, a contributing editor to Alaska magazine, has written hundreds of magazine articles and contributed to many anthologies. His range includes poetry, short fiction, literary essays, natural history, adventure and political commentary. Jans has also been the recipient of numerous writing awards, most recently the co-winner of two Ben Franklin Medals (2007 and 2008) and a Rasmuson Fellowship (2009). A Juneau resident since 1999, Jans also lived for many years in Ambler, the arctic Inupiaq village, where he taught the village schoolchildren.
Books: The Last Light Breaking; A Place Beyond; Tracks of the Unseen; Alaska (with photographer Art Wolfe); The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession With Alaskan Bears; Tracy Arm (with photographer Mark Kelley); Alaska: A Photographic Excursion (with photographer Mark Kelley); Black Bears of the Mendenhall Glacier (with photographer Mark Kelley); The Glacier Wolf.
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Bruce Kluger
Bruce Kluger is a writer, columnist and commentator.
Expertise: Popular culture, parenting, entertainment, television.
Background: Kluger also frequently writes about fatherhood for Parenting magazine and is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered, the Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Time Out New York and The Huffington Post. He's formerly an editor of Playboy magazine and a DVD reviewer for Us Weekly.
Books: Co-author, with David Tabatsky, of Dear President Obama: Letters of Hope from Children Across America.
Website: BruceKluger.com
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Tom Krattenmaker
Tom Krattenmaker is a writer based in Portland, Ore.
Expertise: Religion in American public life.
Background: A former news reporter for the Associated Press and The Orange County Register, Krattenmaker has a master's degree in religion in public life from the University of Pennsylvania and has written religion commentaries and articles for Salon, the Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Oregonian.
Books: Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers.
Website: TomKrattenmaker.com
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Robert Lipsyte
Robert Lipsyte is a longtime sports columnist, author and TV show host.
Expertise: Sports, aging, young adults.
Background: Lipsyte is host of Life (Part2), a weekly PBS show on aging. A longtime city and sports columnist of The New York Times, in 1966 and in 1996, he won Columbia University's Meyer Berger Award for distinguished reporting. In 1992, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. In June 2001, he won the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards' award for lifetime achievement in young adult literature. Lipsyte won an Emmy in 1990 for on-camera achievement as host of the nightly WNET public affairs broadcast The Eleventh Hour.
Books: Author of 16 books, including In the Country of Illness: Comfort and Advice for the Journey; SportsWorld: An American Dreamland; and such young adult novels as The Contender, One Fat Summer and Raiders Night. His forthcoming memoir is called Lessons From the Locker-Room: The Education of an Accidental Sportswriter.
Website: RobertLipsyte.com
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Diane McWhorter
Diane McWhorter is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Expertise: Race and politics.
Background: McWhorter's work has appeared in The New York Times, People, Slate, The American Scholar, Harper's and Boston Magazine, where she was managing editor. She has been a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and is a 2009 Guggenheim fellow. McWhorter grew up in Birmingham, Ala. She began her journalism career in Boston after graduating from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Comparative Literature. She now lives with her family in New York City and is at work on a new book.
Books: Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama — The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, among other awards. A Dream of Freedom, her young-adult history of the civil rights movement.
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Tony Mauro
Tony Mauro is Supreme Court correspondent for The National Law Journal, Incisive Media and law.com.
Expertise: U.S. Supreme Court, law.
Background: Mauro has covered the Supreme Court for 29 years, first for Gannett News Service and USA TODAY and then, since January 2000, for Legal Times, which merged with its sibling publication The National Law Journal in 2009. He also blogs about the Supreme Court at The BLT. Mauro serves on the executive committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He received a bachelor's degree in political science from Rutgers University and a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Books: Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court. He also has contributed chapters to several books, the most recent is A Good Quarrel: America's Top Legal Reporters Share Stories from Inside the Supreme Court.
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Michael Medved
Michael Medved is a nationally syndicated radio host, best-selling author and veteran film critic.
Expertise: Politics and entertainment.
Background: His daily three-hour broadcast from Seattle reaches more than 4 million listeners on more than 200 stations across the country. Medved attended Yale Law School (where his classmates included Bill and Hillary Clinton) before going to work as a political speech writer and consultant for a variety of liberal candidates and officeholders
Books: Medved has written 12 non-fiction books, including best-seller What Really Happened to the Class of '65?, Hospital, Hollywood vs. America, Right Turns, The 10 Big Lies About America and most recently The 5 Big Lies About American Business.
Website: MichaelMedved.com
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Philip Meyer
Philip Meyer was the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill until he retired in 2008.
Expertise: Journalism.
Background: Meyer has reported for The Topeka Daily Capital, The Miami Herald and the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau. In 1967, he was detached from Washington to the Detroit Free Press to report on the Detroit riot. His use of social science research methods, learned in Harvard's Nieman Fellowship program, helped the Free Press staff win the Pulitzer Prize for general local reporting. Meyer is a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists and a past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.
Books: Precision Journalism (the fourth edition was published in 2002). The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age.
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Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, a CNN.COM contributor and a commentator for National Public Radio.
Expertise: Immigration, politics, culture.
Background: A native of California's Central Valley, Navarrette previously co-hosted a daily radio show in Los Angeles, and served on the editorial boards of both The Dallas Morning News and The San Diego Union-Tribune. He also worked a reporter and metro columnist for The Arizona Republic. His writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Texas Monthly, Hispanic magazine and numerous other publications. He appears often on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, and, during the 2008 election, served as a panelist on the PBS' All-American Democratic Presidential Forum.
Books: A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano.
Website: RubenNavarrette.com
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Alcestis "Cooky" Oberg
Alcestis "Cooky" Oberg is a veteran freelance author and writer, specializing in science and technology.
Background: In addition to space, science and technology, Oberg has written on a wide range of subjects, including medicine, education, law, gardening, parenting and family. Background: In her long career as a journalist, Oberg covered NASA for 25 years. She is married to noted author and space consultant James Oberg, who spent 22 years as a space engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Among her more interesting accomplishments include being named a semi-finalist for NASA's Journalist-in-Space program (cancelled after the Challenger disaster) in 1986 and being a certified Master Gardener.
Books: Spacefarers of the '80s and '90s: The Next Thousand People in Space; The Butterflies of Galveston County: What Every Gardener Needs to Know; and co-author with her husband of Pioneering Space: Living on the Next Frontier. She has also co-authored and edited numerous horticulture books in recent years.
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Ken Paulson
Ken Paulson is the president and CEO of the First Amendment Center.
Expertise: First Amendment, the news media.
Background: Paulson is a journalist and lawyer, the editor of USA TODAY from 2004-2009 and former executive director of the First Amendment Center. He has a journalism degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the University of Illinois College of Law, and is a member of the Illinois and Florida Bars. He was also the host of the Emmy-honored national television program Speaking Freely.
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David Person
David Person is a longtime journalist and talk show host.
Expertise: Politics and the South.
Background: Person hosts WEUP Talk, a daily call-in talk show for WEUP-AM, the oldest black-owned radio station in Alabama. Person also blogs twice a month for Adventist Today, a website that features news, analysis and opinion about current events and issues of interest to Seventh-day Adventists. In March 2009, Person retired as an editorial writer and columnist at The Huntsville (Ala.) Times, where his writing earned awards from the Alabama Press Association and the Alabama Associated Press. He has also done feature reporting for National Public Radio's Present at the Creation series and the Tavis Smiley show.
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Kevin Pho
Kevin Pho is a practicing primary care physician in Nashua, N.H.
Expertise: Medicine, health care.
Background: Pho is among the Web's leading physician voices and publishes medical commentary at KevinMD.com, voted the Best Medical Blog of 2008. He has appeared on the CBS Evening News and in The New York Times, CNN, Forbes.com, NPR, SmartMoney magazine and The Wall Street Journal. Pho is board-certified in Internal Medicine. He graduated from Boston University School of Medicine and completed residency training at Boston Medical Center.
Website: KevinMD.com
Social Networks: Follow him on Twitter @KevinMD or on Facebook.
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Kirsten Powers
Kirsten Powers is a columnist for the Daily Beast and a Fox News political analyst.
Expertise: Politics, culture, women's rights/feminism, faith.
Background: Powers previously served in the Clinton White House as a press aide to U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor. She also worked in New York state and city Democratic politics -- including as Andrew Cuomo's press secretary during his 2002 governor's race. She has consulted for organizations such as the National Council for Research on Women and Human Rights First. Her writing has been published in USA TODAY, Elle magazine, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Observer, Salon.com, and American Prospect Online.
Social Networks: Follow her on Twitter @kirstenpowers10.
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Raul Reyes
Raul Reyes is an attorney in New York City.
Expertise: Law and Hispanic issues.
Background: A third-generation Mexican American, Reyes writes frequently on issues affecting the Latino community. Reyes is a contributor to CNN and National Public Radio's Latino USA. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, Texas Monthly, Hispanic magazine and numerous Spanish language-newspapers. Reyes is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia School of Law.
Website: RaulAReyes.com.
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Marc Siegel
Marc Siegel is a practicing internist and associate professor of medicine at New York University's Langone Medical Center.
Expertise: Medicine, health care, epidemics.
Background: Siegel is the medical director of Doctor Radio for Sirius/XM and NYU Langone. He is a graduate of Brown University and SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine.
Books: Siegel is also the author of Bellevue, a novel; False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear; and Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic.
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Lewis M. Simons
Lewis M. Simons is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author.
Expertise: Asia, Islam, war, civil unrest.
Background: Simons began his career as a foreign correspondent in Vietnam, at the height of the war. He has reported from throughout Asia, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for exposing the billions that the Marcos family looted from the Philippines. He was twice more a Pulitzer finalist and has received numerous other journalism awards. Simons' articles have appeared in USA TODAY, The New York Times, Washington Post; Foreign Affairs, National Geographic, Atlantic, and Smithsonian magazines; Huffington Post, Daily Beast and Daily Kos. He has appeared on ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and NPR.
Books: The Next Front (co-author Sen. Christopher S. Bond); Worth Dying For; contributing author of half a dozen books on war, international affairs and journalism.
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Mary Zeiss Stange
Mary Zeiss Stange is a professor of women's studies and religion at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Expertise: Religion, women and feminism, environment, hunting and other political and social issues.
Background: Stange leads something of a double life — college teaching in Upstate New York, and ranching and hunting in Montana, where she and her husband, Doug, operate the Crazy Woman Bison Ranch. She holds a B.A. in English literature, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in religion, from Syracuse University.
Books: Woman the Hunter, the first cultural history of the relationship of women and hunting; Gun Women: Firearms and Feminism in Contemporary America; Heart Shots: Women Write about Hunting; and the forthcoming Hard Grass: Life on the Crazy Woman Bison Ranch.
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Oliver "Buzz" Thomas
Oliver "Buzz" Thomas is an attorney and Baptist minister.
Expertise: Religion and law.
Background: Thomas has practiced at every level of state and federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court. He has been a parish minister, general counsel to the Baptist Joint Committee, special counsel for religious and civil liberties to the National Council of Churches, a consultant to the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University and litigation director of the Knoxville Legal Aid Society. He has appeared as an expert witness before the Judiciary Committees of both chambers of the United States Congress as well as before state legislatures. He has been a guest commentator on major media outlets such as C-Span, CNN and National Public Radio.
Books: 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job).
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Katrina Trinko
Katrina Trinko is a writer based in New York City.
Expertise: Politics, campaigns, education and culture
Background: Trinko is currently a reporter for National Review Online, focusing on campaigns and national politics. Previously, she held a fellowship at USA TODAY’s editorial department and reported for Philadelphia newspaper The Bulletin. Trinko is a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College.
Website: KatrinaTrinko.com
Social Networks: Follow her on Twitter @KatrinaTrinko.
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Jonathan Turley
Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar.
Expertise: Law — constitutional to legal theory to tort.
Background: Professor Turley holds the prestigious Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades, representing whistle-blowers, military personnel and a wide range of other clients. Turley is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He is also a nationally recognized legal commentator who appears regularly on all of the major television networks. Turley received his B.A. at the University of Chicago and his J.D. at Northwestern.
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Laura Vanderkam
Laura Vanderkam is an author and freelance writer.
Expertise: Social trends, economics, careers and education, in addition to other topics.
Background: Vanderkam began writing columns for USA TODAY as an intern at the newspaper in 2001. Her work has also appeared in Scientific American, City Journal, Wired, Reader's Digest and The Wall Street Journal. She was the recipient of a 2006-07 Phillips Journalism Fellowship and lives in New York City.
Books: She is the author of the forthcoming 168 Hours and of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues, which looked at the rise in self-employment among young Americans.
Website: LauraVanderkam.com
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Patrick Welsh
Patrick Welsh is a longtime high school English teacher.
Expertise: Education from the ground floor.
Background: Welsh teaches English at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va. The school's struggles with integration in 1971, Welsh's second year there, were portrayed in the Denzel Washington film Remember the Titans. Currently, T.C. Williams has 2,100 students of every racial, ethnic and socioeconomic group imaginable, including students from more than 100 countries, many of them refugees. His writing on education and the youth culture has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek and other publications. He is a graduate of Canisius College and the George Washington University Law School, and is a member of the Virginia State Bar.
Books: Tales Out of School.
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DeWayne Wickham
DeWayne Wickham is a veteran print columnist who also has worked as a commentator for CBS News, Black Entertainment News and the Tom Joyner Morning Show.
Expertise: Politics and race relations in the United States and abroad.
Background: Wickham has extensive knowledge about the interplay between race and politics. He's also reported from every corner of the United States and from many foreign countries including Cuba, Jamaica, France, Canada, Haiti, Germany and Venezuela over a journalism career that's spanned more than three decades. A founding member and fomer president of the National Association of Black Journalists, he currently serves as director of the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies at North Carolina A&T State University.
Website: DeWayneWickham.blogspot.com