Joe Kahn | |
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Born | Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. | August 19, 1964
Education | Harvard University (BA, MA) |
Relatives | Leo Kahn (father) |
Joseph F. Kahn (born August 19, 1964) is an American journalist who currently serves as executive editor of The New York Times . [1]
Kahn attended Middlesex School as a boarding student, [2] serving as editor-in-chief of both the school newspaper and its literary magazine before graduating in 1983. [3] He attended Harvard University as an undergraduate, where he earned a bachelor's degree in American history in 1987 and was an editor for The Harvard Crimson . [4] In 1990, he received a master's degree in East Asian studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. [1]
Kahn joined the Times in January 1998, after four years as China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal . Before the Journal, he was a reporter at The Dallas Morning News , where he was part of a team of reporters awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for international reporting for their stories on violence against women around the world. [1] In June 1989, the Chinese government ordered Kahn to leave the country because he was working as a reporter while using a tourist visa. [5]
In 2006, Kahn and Jim Yardley won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting [6] for the Times covering rule of law in China, including their coverage of the detention of American-Chinese entrepreneur David Ji.
Kahn was assistant masthead editor for International at the New York Times from 2014 to September 2016. [7] In 2016, Dean Baquet appointed him as managing editor for the Times, where in time he was recognized as Baquet's likely successor as executive editor. [8]
In 2025, Kahn defended and praised an article in The New York Times on Zohran Mamdani's college application to Columbia, [9] [10] in spite of reported claims of publishing the article in pursuit of getting ahead of a conservative activist Christopher Rufo. [11] [12] Rufo appeared on the April 11th, 2025 edition of the New York Times Podcast The Daily (podcast). [13] The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Rufo as a "far-right propagandist," and Rufo has recommended a podcast published by the Human Diversity Foundation. [14] [15] The article on Mamdani's college application used information credited to the alias of Jordan Lasker, who has been described as a proponent of race science and has co-authored with self-described eugenicists. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20]
Kahn's grandparents on his father's side were Jewish from Lithuania. His mother's parents were immigrants from Ireland. Kahn is the eldest child of Dorothy Davidson and Leo Kahn (1916–2011), [21] [22] founder of the Purity Supreme supermarket chain in New England and co-founder of the global office supply chain Staples. [23] Leo had been awarded a journalism degree from Columbia University, after which he briefly had worked as a reporter, prompting a continuing interest in journalism that was reflected in his frequent dissection of newspaper coverage with his son. [1] Leo Kahn served on the board of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) from 1990 and up to at least 2008. [24] [25] CAMERA has successfully petitioned for corrections from The New York Times during Joseph Kahn's tenure at the organization. [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32]