Emily Bazelon

Emily Bazelon (born March 4, 1971) is an American journalist. She is a staff writer for ''The New York Times Magazine,'' a senior research fellow at Yale Law School, and co-host of the ''Slate'' podcast ''Political Gabfest''. She is a former senior editor of ''Slate''. Her work as a writer focuses on law, women, and family issues. She has written two national bestsellers published by Penguin Random House: ''Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy'' (2013) and ''Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration'' (2019). ''Charged'' won the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Current Interest category, and the 2020 Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association. It was also the runner up for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia University and the Nieman Foundation, and a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from the New York Public Library.

Early life and education

Bazelon was born on March 4, 1971 and grew up in Philadelphia. Her father was an attorney and her mother was a psychiatrist. She attended Germantown Friends School, where she was on the tennis team. She has three sisters: Jill Bazelon, who founded an organization that provides financial literacy classes free of charge to low-income high school students and individuals in several cities; Lara Bazelon, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and prominent advocate for overturning wrongful convictions; and Dana Bazelon, Senior Policy Counsel to Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney. Her family is Jewish but not especially religious; she said in an interview, "I was raised to see Judaism in terms of ethical precepts."

Bazelon is the granddaughter of David L. Bazelon, formerly a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,''In Brief''
, Summer 2003, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. and second cousin twice removed of feminist Betty Friedan.

Bazelon graduated from Yale College in 1993, where she was managing editor of '' The New Journal''. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2000 and was an editor of the ''Yale Law Journal''. In 2004, she was made a Soros Justice Media Fellow by Open Society Foundations. She held the Dorot Fellowship in Israel from 1993–94. After law school she worked as a law clerk for Judge Kermit Lipez of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Journalism career

Bazelon is a writer for ''The New York Times Magazine'' and former senior editor of ''Slate''. She has written on subjects such as voting rights,The Big Kozinski
''Legal Affairs'', Emily Bazelon, February 2005. Retrieved August 5, 2018. the '' Hamdan v. Rumsfeld'' Guantanamo detainee due process trial and the alleged post-abortion syndrome. Her work as a writer focuses on law, women, and family issues.

Before joining ''Slate'', Bazelon was a senior editor of ''Legal Affairs''.List of ''Slate'' contributors
Her writing has also appeared in ''The Atlantic'', '' Mother Jones'', ''The Washington Post'', ''The Boston Globe'', ''The New Republic'', and other publications.

Bazelon is also a senior research scholar in Law and Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School. Bazelon is affiliated with the Law and Media Program of Yale Law School.

Between 2012–14, Bazelon made eight appearances on ''The Colbert Report'' on Comedy Central to discuss Supreme Court and anti-bullying issues.

Writing on legalization of prostitution

In 2016, Bazelon wrote an article in ''The New York Times'' on the legalization of prostitution, discussing the decriminalization of johns, pimps, and brothel owners as a means to protect sex workers.

Writing on bullying

Bazelon wrote a series on bullying and cyberbullying for ''Slate'', called "Bull-E". She was nominated for the 2011 Michael Kelly Award for her story "What Really Happened to Phoebe Prince?" The three-part article is about the suicide of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in January 2010, and the decision by the local prosecutor to bring criminal charges against six teenagers in connection with this death. The Michael Kelly Award, sponsored by the Atlantic Media Co., "honors a writer or editor whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly's own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth." Bazelon's series also sparked heated reaction and a response from district attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, who brought the charges against the six teenagers.

Bazelon authored a book about bullying and school climate published by Random House, titled ''Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy''. It received a front page ''The New York Times Book Review'' review, which called the book "intelligent" and "rigorous", and described the author as "nonjudgmental in a generous rather than simply neutral way," and "a compassionate champion for justice in the domain of childhood’s essential unfairness." In ''The Wall Street Journal'', Meghan Cox Gurdon called ''Sticks and Stones'' a "humane and closely reported exploration of the way that hurtful power relationships play out in the contemporary public-school setting".

Writing on abortion

Bazelon has reported critically on the anti-abortion movement and opponents of legal abortion, including "pro-life feminists" and proponents of the concept of post-abortion syndrome, while being supportive of abortion providers and pro-choice federal judges. She has described crisis pregnancy centers as being "all about bait-and-switch" and "falsely maligning" the abortion procedure. Bazelon has discussed her support for legal abortion on the ''Double X'' blog.

Writing on criminal justice

In 2018 and 2019, Bazelon published a number of articles on criminal justice reform. Her book ''Charged'' focuses on the role of prosecutors, the history of "tough on crime" politics in elections for that office, and the new generation of reformist prosecutors.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg interview controversy

In July 2009, the ''New York Times Magazine'' published Bazelon's interview with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Discussing her view of ''Roe v. Wade'' in 1973, Ginsburg commented, "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion."

Bazelon did not ask any follow-up question to what some interpreted as Ginsburg endorsing a eugenics-based rationale for legalized abortion, i.e., as a remedy for "populations that we don't want to have too many of." Bazelon was criticized by some conservative commentators for not doing so. Bazelon responded to the criticism, stating that she is "imperfect" and did not ask a follow-up question because she believed that Ginsburg's use of "we" had referred to "some people at the time, not insburgherself or a group that she feels a part of."

The interview was cited in the United States House of Representatives' Committee Report in support of the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2012.

Transgender article controversy

In June 2022, Bazelon published an article in ''The New York Times'' on gender affirming healthcare, titled "The Battle Over Gender Therapy". Bazelon interviewed parents from gender-critical organization Genspect who defined the rise in transgender-identified children as a "gender cult" and mass craze, "suggesting that exposure to transgender kids, education about trans people, and trans ideas on the internet could spread transness to others". Some parents from Genspect stated transgender people should not be able to transition until the age of 25. The article also referenced a Substack newsletter by an anonymous Genspect parent titled "It's Strategy People!" about how the organisation gets its perspective into the media by purposefully not referring to transgender children as "mentally ill" or "deluded".

The article was criticized by transgender people, including Dr. Sunny Moraine, who described the article as "sanitizing wildly transphobic talking points", and Instructor Alejandra Caraballo of Harvard Law School, who described it as having "only just further opened the door for eliminationist policies".

''PinkNews'' accused the article of "uncritically platformed gender-critical group Genspect" and of spreading "vile rhetoric".

''The Texas Observer'' accused the article of "elevat nga handful of outliers and their discredited theories about trans people to prominence they do not enjoy among the medical community." for "the sake of 'balance' and objectivity" and that "the article echoes right-wing fear-mongering about whether trans kids should be allowed to transition and even suggests their existence could be dangerous to other young people", while arguing that "All of this could have been avoided had Bazelon listened to more experts and included more transgender people. That includes Ky Schevers and Lee Leveille, who run a trans advocacy group called Health Liberation Now! Bazelon communicated extensively with them both while working on the article, conducting interviews that were ultimately discarded" and noting that "the state of Texas is using it as evidence in an ongoing attempt to investigate trans-supportive healthcare as 'child abuse'". Ky Schevers was quoted stating: "The NYT just platformed a group made up of transphobic parents & conversion therapists who've written about how they have the same end goals as hardline trans eliminationists but moderate their views to try to break into the mainstream."

The article was covered on '' The Brian Lehrer Show'' on WNYC as part of "a debate from within the medical community that provides care for trans teenagers who seek to transition" and on Press Play on KCRW, which pointed out that "a growing right-wing backlash to gender-affirming care further complicates the debate."

Personal life

Bazelon lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband, Paul Sabin, a professor of history and American studies at Yale. They are members of a Reform synagogue.

Honors and awards

Bazelon was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

In 2020, Bazelon's book ''Charged'' won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the current interest category and the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association. It was also a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from the New York Public Library.

References

External links

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''XX Factor''
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bazelon, Emily
1971 births
Living people
Writers from Philadelphia
Activists from Philadelphia
Jewish American journalists
American women journalists
Anti-bullying activists
Jewish women writers
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times writers
Slate (magazine) people
Yale Law School alumni
Yale College alumni
Germantown Friends School alumni
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Journalists from Pennsylvania
American women non-fiction writers
21st-century American journalists
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American women writers
20th-century American Jews
21st-century American Jews
20th-century American women