Biography
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Andrew Sullivan was born in South Godstone, Great Britain in 1963. In 1981 he earned an open Scholarship to Oxford University and was elected the youngest ever president of the Oxford Debating Union. After graduation from Oxford with honors in Modern History and Modern Languages, Sullivan came to the U.S. on a Harkness Fellowship (the British equivalent of the Rhodes Scholarship), to attend Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. There he earned a Master's Degree in Public Administration in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1990.
While still a student at Harvard, Sullivan worked as a summer intern at The New Republic magazine. In the summer of 1987, he returned as a full-time associate editor, the youngest in the magazine’s history. Colleagues were struck by Sullivan’s excellent journalistic instincts and his distinctive writing style with its heavy use of imagery. In October of 1991, he was named Editor-in-Chief of the magazine.
Sullivan’s tenure at The New Republic was distinguished for his tendency to concentrate on sociological topics, such as race relations, popular culture, and homosexuality. He stirred controversy with his widely influential critique of the Clinton health-care plan, the first publication of Charles Murray's The Bell Curve, pioneering coverage of gay rights, the Supreme Court and affirmative action, and his acclaimed reporting and writing on the Bosnian War. In 1992 and 1995, he received National Magazine Awards for Reporting, General Excellence and Public interest. In 1996, he was named Editor of the Year by Adweek.
In January 2007, Sullivan left his post as columnist and blogger for TIME to become a senior editor of The Atlantic. Sullivan was one of the first journalists to experiment with blogging. His blog, The Daily Dish, can now be found on the homepage of TheAtlantic.com. It has been ranked by Playboy as #1 on its list of Top 10 Political Blogs in America. He is also a columnist for The Sunday Times of London.
Sullivan’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine, among others. His media appearances have included Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Nightline, C-SPAN, Charlie Rose, the CBS Evening News and The Chris Matthews Show, where he is a regular panelist. His numerous public radio appearances including Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, and The Diane Rehm Show.
A practicing Catholic, Sullivan has challenged the Church’s position on gay life in his writing and lectures. During a talk at Boston College, he called the Church position on homosexuality as a involuntary, sinless condition whose expression is always sinful “fundamentally incoherent.” He went on to say that by banning the act of love, the Church was insuring that homosexuals could not love and be loved and therefore could not find completion in their lives. He also expressed disappointment in the Church’s failure to confront the everyday realities of gay life.
Sullivan is author of the critically-acclaimed landmark book Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (1995), in which he offers an in-depth discussion on the subject of gay rights. It has been translated into four languages and is considered the definitive book on one of the country's most contentious social issues. In 1997, Sullivan edited a companion volume: Same Sex Marriage: Pro and Con, A Reader. He is also the author of Love Undetectable, a collection of essays that forms an impassioned plea for diverse audiences to acknowledge the humanity of AIDS and to view friendship as an integral element in our society. In his latest book, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back, Sullivan makes an impassioned call to rescue conservatism from the Republican far right. He argues for the revival of a conservative tradition based on practical restraint, individual freedom, constitutional norms and skepticism.
A seasoned lecturer, he has spoken at Harvard, Yale, Boston College, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Emory, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of California, San Diego, to name a few.
Columnist, Sunday Times of London