Katrina vanden Heuvel

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel, 2011
Born	(1959-10-07) October 7, 1959 New York City, New York, United States
Alma mater	Princeton University
Occupation	Editor, publisher and entrepreneur
Spouse(s)	Stephen F. Cohen (m. 1988; 1 child)
Children	one daughter
Parents	Jean Stein and William vanden Heuvel
Relatives	Jules C. Stein and Doris Babbette Jones (maternal grandparents)

Katrina vanden Heuvel (/ˈvændənhuːvəl/; born October 7, 1959) is the editor, publisher, and part-owner of the magazine The Nation. She has been the magazine's editor since 1995. She is a frequent guest on numerous television programs. Vanden Heuvel is a self-described liberal and progressive. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Early life

Vanden Heuvel was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of Jean Stein, an heiress, best-selling author, and editor of the literary journal Grand Street, and William vanden Heuvel, an attorney, former US ambassador, member of John F. Kennedy's administration, businessman, and author. She has one sister and two step-siblings. Her maternal grandparents were Music Corporation of America founder Jules C. Stein and Doris Babbette Jones (originally Jonas). Through her maternal grandmother, vanden Heuvel is a distant cousin of actor and comedian George Jessel.

Vanden Heuvel graduated from the Trinity School in 1977. Vanden Heuvel studied politics and history at Princeton University, writing her senior thesis on McCarthyism and serving as editor-in-chief of the Nassau Weekly. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1981.

Career

During her undergraduate years at Princeton, she served as editor of the Nassau Weekly, a school publication, and had an internship at National Lampoon magazine in 1978." She also worked as a production assistant at ABC television. According to a Princeton alumni publication, during her junior year, she had already worked "as a The Nation intern for nine months after taking the 'Politics and the Press' course taught by Blair Clark, the magazine's editor from 1976 to 1978" and "returned to The Nation in 1984 as assistant editor for foreign affairs".^{[citation needed]}

As an owner of The Nation, she is one of a group of investors brought together in 1995 by then-editor Victor Navasky in a for-profit partnership to buy the magazine – then losing $500,000 a year^{[citation needed]} – from investment banker Arthur L. Carter. This group of investors included, among others, actor Paul Newman; novelist E.L. Doctorow; former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Alan Sagner;^{[citation needed]} and Peter Norton,^{[citation needed]} creator of the Norton Utilities software.

In 1989, vanden Heuvel was promoted to The Nation's editor-at-large position, responsible for its coverage of the USSR. In 1990, she co-founded Vy i My ("You and We"), a quarterly feminist journal linking American and Russian women. In 1995, vanden Heuvel was made editor of The Nation.

Vanden Heuvel's blog at The Nation is called "Editor's Cut". She also writes a column for The Washington Post op-ed page.

In a 2005 interview with Theodore Hamm in The Brooklyn Rail, vanden Heuvel describes the contents of The Nation and its larger role in news media: "Ideas, policy, activism, reporting, investigative reporting, as well as cultural pieces, reviews, writing. I hope people understand that about a third of this magazine, every week, is a very well edited, fascinating, cultural section, featuring reviews to people’s of the big books as well as some of the under-appreciated, under-the-radar, independent books and films and art. But the main part of The Nation is to put on the agenda the ideas and views and news that might not otherwise be there, to comment—from our perspective—on the news of the week—and to provide strategies and some measure of hope in these times."

She is the co-editor of Taking Back America – And Taking Down The Radical Right (Nation Books, 2004) and, most recently, editor of The Dictionary of Republicanisms (Nation Books, 2005). She is also co-editor (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (Norton, 1989) and editor of The Nation: 1865–1990, and the collection A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.

She is a frequent commentator on American and international politics on ABC's This Week, and also on MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Vanden Heuvel serves on the Institute for Policy Studies Board of Trustees.

On 6 November 2012, she was invited to a debate hosted by Dutch TV channel NOS, to discuss some issues regarding the 2012 US Elections. Half-way down the debate she left the studio after being called a "liar" by her opponent. A few minutes later, she returned to the studio, saying she "loves Holland, but that this is unworthy of TV".

Personal life

In 1988, vanden Heuvel married New York University Russian Studies Professor Stephen F. Cohen, a writer on the Soviet Union and a professor at Princeton University, continuing for 30 years. They were married by Presbyterian minister and peace activist William Sloane Coffin in a non-denominational ceremony. They have one daughter, Nicola, born in 1991. The family resides in the Upper West Side section of the Manhattan borough of New York City.

Awards

Vanden Heuvel is a recipient of Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award for her 2003 article, "Right-to-Lifers Hit Russia," a report on the pro-life movement in that country. The special issue she conceived and edited, "Gorbachev's Soviet Union", was awarded New York University's 1988 Olive Branch Award. Vanden Heuvel was also co-editor of Vyi i Myi, a Russian-language feminist newsletter.

Vanden Heuvel has received awards for public service from numerous groups, including the Liberty Hill Foundation, the Correctional Association and the Association for American-Russian Women. In 2003, she received the New York Civil Liberties Union's Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right of Privacy. She was the recipient of the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee's 2003 "Voices of Peace" award. Vanden Heuvel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She also serves on the board of the Institute for Policy Studies, the World Policy Institute, the Correctional Association of New York, and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and previously served on the board of the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

Bibliography

• Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (1990), co-authored with Stephen F. Cohen (ISBN 0-393-30735-2)
• A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy, and September 11, 2001 (2002), edited by Katrina vanden Heuvel (ISBN 1-56025-400-9)
• Taking Back America – And Taking Down the Radical Right (2004), edited by Katrina vanden Heuvel and Robert Borosage (ISBN 1-56025-583-8)
• Dictionary of Republicanisms: The Indispensable Guide to What They Really Mean When They Say What They Think You Want to Hear (2005) by Katrina vanden Heuvel (ISBN 1-56025-789-X)
• The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama. New York: Nation Books. 2011. ISBN 978-1-56858-688-5. 

See also

• List of people from New York City
• List of Princeton University people
• Members of the Council on Foreign Relations

External links

• The Nation Bio
• Katrina vanden Heuvel's campaign contributions
• "Tomdispatch Interview: Katrina vanden Heuvel, the Media on Speed", April 20, 2006.
• vanden Heuvel's blog at The Huffington Post
• Katrina vanden Heuvel's blog "Editor's Cut" at The Nation magazine
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with vanden Heuvel, June 10, 2007
• Katrina vanden Heuvel at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Katrina vanden Heuvel in libraries (WorldCat catalog)