Katrina vanden Heuvel is an American editor and publisher. She is the publisher, part-owner, and former editor of the progressive magazine The Nation. She was the magazine's editor from 1995 until 15 June 2019, when she was succeeded by D. D. Guttenplan. She is often a commentator on various political television programs. Vanden Heuvel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a US nonprofit think tank. She is a recipient of the Norman Mailer Prize.
Early life and education
Katrina vanden Heuvel was born in New York City, the daughter of Jean Stein, an heiress, best-selling author, and editor of the literary journalGrand Street; her father was 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. Through her maternal grandmother, vanden Heuvel is a distant cousin of actor and comedian George Jessel. Her mother is of Jewish descent and her father is of Dutch and Belgian ancestry. Vanden Heuvel graduated from the Trinity School in 1977. Vanden Heuvel graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in politics from Princeton University in 1981 after completing a 230-page long senior thesis titled "American Victims: A Study of the Anti-Communist Crusade." While at Princeton, she served as an editor and eventually as editor-in-chief of the Nassau Weekly, a school publication, and had an internship at National Lampoon magazine in 1978. She then worked as a production assistant at ABC for two years.
Career
At ''The Nation''
By the end of her junior year, vanden Heuvel had already worked for nine months as an intern at The Nation, after taking the 'Politics and the Press' course taught by Blair Clark, the magazine's editor from 1976 to 1978, returning to the magazine in 1984 to serve as the foreign affairsassistant editor. In 1989, vanden Heuvel was promoted to The Nations editor-at-large position, responsible for its coverage of the USSR. In 1995, vanden Heuvel was named chief editor of The Nation. By 1995, The Nation was losing $500,000 year, and its editor Victor Navasky brought vanden Heuvel together with other investors in a for-profit partnership to buy the magazine from investment banker Arthur L. Carter. The investors included vanden Heuvel, Paul Newman, E.L. Doctorow, Alan Sagner, Peter Norton and others. 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: Vanden Heuvel contributed a blog to the online version of The Nation, entitled "Editor's Cut". In April 2019, vanden Heuvel announced that she would step down on June 15, 2019, with D. D. Guttenplan taking her place.
Other activities
With her husband, Stephen F. Cohen, vanden Heuvel edited Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers. She also edited the compilation volume, The Nation: 1865-1990. In 1990, vanden Heuvel co-founded, and as of this date, co-edits Vy i My, a quarterly feminist journal linking American and Russian women, and elsewhere described as a Russian-language feminist newsletter. She was editor for the collection, A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001 and co-edited Taking Back America And Taking Down the Radical Right, and, more recently edited The Dictionary of Republicanisms. Vanden Heuvel has appeared on ABC's This Week, MSNBC, CNN and PBS and has been published in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Boston Globe. As of December 2016, she continues to write an op-ed column for The Washington Post.
In June 1987, vanden Heuvel edited a special edition of The Nation, "Gorbachev's Soviet Union", which was awarded the New York University Olive Branch Award. Vanden Heuvel was awarded Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award for her 2003 article "Right-to-Lifers Hit Russia", a report on the anti-abortion movement in that country. She won the NYCLU's Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right of Privacy and the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee's "Voices of Peace" award in 2003. Vanden Heuvel has also been recognized and granted awards by the Liberty Hill Foundation, the Correctional Association, and the Association for American-Russian Women.
