Leonard Steinhorn

Leonard Steinhorn is a professor of communication at American University, where he teaches politics, strategic communication, recent American history, and courses on the presidency. A former speechwriter and strategist for causes, candidates, and members of Congress, he’s written on American politics and culture for major print and online publications, among them The Washington Post, Salon, Politico, and The Huffington Post, and his two books – The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy and By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and The Reality of Race – have generated widespread discussion and debate. Steinhorn appears regularly in the media and serves as a political analyst for CBS News.

Career

Steinhorn is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar College, where he received a bachelor's degree in history. He later received his master's degree in history from Johns Hopkins University. For several years, he worked as a speechwriter, press secretary, and policy advisor for members of the United States Congress.

In 1995, Steinhorn began teaching at American University in Washington, D.C. He was voted American University Faculty Member of the Year in 1999 and 2001 and he also was named Honors Professor of the Year in 2010. From 2002 to 2004, he was president of American University's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. He has served as the Director of the Public Communication Division, and is both a professor of communication and an affiliate professor of history.

Steinhorn's work at American University has been covered extensively by broadcast and print media. His courses on the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were featured on CNN and the NBC affiliate in D.C., respectively. In 2008 and 2012, WTTG broadcast Steinhorn's campaign courses live on its Web site each week as part of its CampaignU project with American University. His course, "Talking About My Parents' Generation: Understanding Baby Boomers and How They've Shaped Us," was featured in USA Today.

Steinhorn has spoken as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series at the Clinton School of Public Service, at Charles University in Prague, and at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. He also contributed to the book The Boomer Century and its accompanying 2007 PBS documentary.

During the 2012 election he served as a political analyst for CBS News, and before that he was a political analyst for FOX-5 News in Washington, DC.

Steinhorn lectured at the One Day University conference, a nationwide adult education program featuring distinguished faculty from top colleges across the country, in September 2014 about the events of 1968.

He was an on-air commentator for three episodes of the CNN weekly series The Sixties, which is aired in the Summer of 2015.

Pundit Wire

In 2010, Steinhorn founded the website PunditWire with Robert Lehrman, an adjunct professor in American University's School of Communication and former speechwriter for Al Gore. PunditWire is a news commentary site whose contributors are all current or former speechwriters from across the political spectrum. PunditWire is sponsored by American University.

Works

Steinhorn wrote The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy (2006) and co-authored By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race (1999).

He has been published in the Washington Post, Salon, New York Times, Politico, International Herald Tribune, Huffington Post, and History News Network among others

Critical reception

Steinhorn's work has been largely well received by critics. The New York Times Book Review called By the Color of Our Skin "a clear-headed, energetic and pointedly sarcastic book about this country's racial divisions and cultural hypocrisy." Booklist called it "a provocative and timely critique of race relations in America."

Kirkus wrote that Steinhorn's widely discussed and debated book, The Greater Generation, was "a sturdy, often convincing defense of his own Boomer generation." Publishers Weekly called it a "powerful book" and wrote that "Steinhorn forcefully and gracefully defends his age cohort against these stereotypes in a paean to the generation that forever altered the face of American culture." Salon.com wrote that Steinhorn's "unapologetic celebration of the boomer legacy is refreshing, and much of his argument is convincing," but criticized it for sentimentalizing boomers.

Selected works

• "Prejudice is a Powerful Force" "The Hill", 30 June, 2015.
• "Likability shouldn't Matter when Electing a President" "The Hill", 19 October, 2015.
• "War, Liberalism, Trust in Government: The Many Casualties of LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" "Huffington Post", 4 August, 2014.
• "The GOP's Racial DNA.""The Hill", 6 June, 2014.
• "Armed, Locked and Loaded: The Worst and Most Intimidating Gun States." "Huffington Post", 21 March, 2014.

"Washington Post", 5 October, 2012.

• "The Irony of Mitt Romney's 47 Percent." "Huffington Post", 20, September 2012.
• "Is Mitt Romney a Serial Liar?" "Pundit Wire", 13 February, 2012.
• "When the Great Communicator Turned Silent: Ronald Reagan and AIDS." PunditWire, 11 February 2011.
• "A Wave Election Indeed -- Wave of the Past, Not the Future." PunditWire, 5 November 2010.
• "If the Chilean Mine Disaster Happened Here." PunditWire, 17 October 2010.
• "The Tea Party is Mad as Hell -- And the Media Shouldn't Take it Anymore." PunditWire, 18 September 2010.
• "Look Courtside to Clues for Obama’s Presidency." Politico, 7 January 2009.
• "Pre-Palin, a VP Pick Judged on Looks." Politico, 6 September 2008.
• "Blue-Collar Fault Line Is Not to Blame." Politico, 5 May 2008.
• "Is the Theory of Evolution Really a Matter of Faith?" History News Network, 31 December 2007.
• "Boomers: The Real Greatest Generation." The Washington Post, 19 February 2006.
• "What Katrina Tells Us About Mr. Bush’s Philosophy of Government." History News Network, 12 September 2005.
• "Scrooge’s Nightmare." "Salon", 11 November 2004.
• "Give Al a Chance." History News Network, 12 November 2001.
• "Now’s a Good Time to Remember Richard Jewell." History News Network, 16 July 2001.
• "The Media Decade." "The Baltimore Sun", 25 July 1999.

External links

• "Leonard Steinhorn's AU Biography"
• "PunditWire"
• CampaignU at FOX-5 News
• AARP Magazine: Q&A with Leonard Steinhorn
• "Boomer Course Closes Generation Gap", USA Today