Stephen Schlesinger

Stephen Schlesinger is a Fellow at the Century Foundation in New York City. He is the former Director of the World Policy Institute at the New School (1997-2006) and former publisher of the quarterly magazine, The World Policy Journal. Mr. Schlesinger received his BA from Harvard University and his JD from Harvard Law School. In the early 1970s, he edited and published The New Democrat Magazine. Thereafter he spent four years as a staff writer at Time Magazine. For twelve years, he served as a speechwriter and foreign policy advisor to New York State Governor Mario Cuomo. In the mid 1990s, he worked at the United Nations at Habitat, the agency dealing with global cities. He is the author of three books, including Act of Creation: The Founding of The United Nations (Westview Press 2003), for which he won the 2004 Harry S. Truman Book Award; Bitter Fruit: The Story of the U.S. Coup in Guatemala (Doubleday 1982, with Stephen Kinzer) cited as one of the New York Times’ “notable books” for 1982 which has sold over 100,000 copies; and The New Reformers (Houghton Mifflen 1975). He is co-editor (with Andrew Schlesinger) of the best-selling Journals 1952-2000 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., (Penguin Press 2007), and of The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger Jr (Random House 2013). In 2016, he wrote the introduction to President John Kennedy’s first book, Why England Slept, reissued by Praeger. He is a specialist on the United Nations and on the foreign policies of the Clinton and Bush and Obama Administrations. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers and on-line sites, including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation Magazine, The New York Observer, and Huffingtonpost.com. In 1978, he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He has appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” and Chuck Todd’s “The Daily Rundown”, as well as on CNN, Fox TV, NBC, NPR and other media outlets. His website is: www.stephenschlesinger.com