John R. MacArthur is president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine and an award-winning journalist and author. Under his leadership, the magazine has received 18 National Magazine Awards, the industry’s highest recognition.
In 2008, MacArthur published his third book, You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America. He writes a monthly column for the Providence Journal and, in French, for Le Devoir (Montreal) on a wide range of topics, from politics to culture. In 1993 he received the Mencken Award for best editorial/op-ed column for his New York Times investigation of Nayrah Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter who helped fake the Iraqi baby-incubator atrocity.
MacArthur’s first book, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, won the Illinois ACLU’s 1992 Harry Kalven Freedom of Expression award. His follow-up, The Selling of “Free Trade”: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy, was published in 2000.
A tireless advocate for international human rights, MacArthur founded and serves on the board of directors of the Death Penalty Information Center and the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center. Along with members of his family he founded Article 19, the International Center on Censorship, based in London, and in 1989 he initiated and helped organize the PEN/Article 19/Author’s Guild rally for Salman Rushdie. He is also on the board of directors of the Author’s Guild, and he is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities.
(Bio excerpted from Columbia Journalism School)
