Nat Hentoff

Nat Hentoff is one of the foremost authorities on the First Amendment. While his books and articles regularly defend the rights of Americans to think and speak freely, he also explores our freedoms under the rest of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment. His column, Sweet Land of Liberty, has been distributed by the United Feature Syndicate since 1992. In 1980, Hentoff was awarded an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for his coverage of the law and criminal justice in his columns; in 1995, he received the National Press Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism; and in 1999, he was a Pulitzer finalist for commentary. Hentoff was a columnist and staff writer with The Village Voice for 51 years, from 1957 until 2008. A jazz expert, he writes on music for The Wall Street Journal and Jazz Times. He serves on the Board of Advisors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.) and is on the steering committee of the Reporters' Committee for the Freedom of the Press. A native of Boston, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in education and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1950. He did graduate work at Harvard University, received his B.A. with highest honors from Northeastern University and was awarded an honorary doctorate of law from Northeastern in 1985.