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Nicholas Lemann is Dean and Henry R. Luce Professor of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. An award-winning journalist, he served as a national staff reporter for The Washington Post, a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker. Earlier, he held the posts of managing editor of The Washington Monthly and executive editor of the Texas Monthly. He is the author of several books examining the social and political history of America, including The Promised Land and The Big Test. Under his leadership, Columbia is launching in September its first new professional degree program in 70 years, a one-year Master of Arts in journalism, which, with the help of many faculty members from elsewhere at the university, will add intensive instruction on the substance of complicated subjects to the journalism skills its students already have. Lemann is a graduate of Harvard College.