Neil Brown, president of The Poynter Institute, and Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and professor of philosophy at Harvard University, have been elected as co-chairs of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Brown and Shelby succeed New Yorker Contributing Editor Katherine Boo, New York Times Opinion Columnist Gail Collins and Associated Press Vice President & Editor-at-Large for Standards John Daniszewski, who shared the post during the 2022 awards cycle.
Brown joined Poynter in September 2017, after serving as the editor and vice president of the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times). He was named editor in May 2010, and oversaw the journalism published in the Times, on its website tampabay.com, and a daily tabloid called tbt*. During Brown's tenure, the paper won dozens of national and state awards, including six Pulitzer Prizes. He also launched PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking website that has been replicated nationally and inspired similar efforts worldwide.
“It is a great honor to serve as co-chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, a distinguished and dedicated group of creative leaders who aim to uphold standards for excellence in journalism, arts and letters,” said Brown. “Together we will carry on the work of ensuring the Pulitzer Prizes remain trusted and relevant.”
He first joined Times Publishing in 1988, serving as managing editor in Washington, D.C. at Congressional Quarterly. He came to the Times in 1993 as world editor in charge of national and international news and then as managing editor and executive editor. He was named to the Times Publishing Company's board in 1997 as a director and was made a vice president in 2001.
A native of Chicago, Brown began his newspaper career as a reporter and editor at the Miami Herald. He is past president of the Florida Society of News Editors and served six years on the Board of Directors of the American Society of News Editors.
Brown lives in St. Petersburg with his wife, journalist and author Gelareh Asayesh. They have two children.
Professor Shelby began teaching at Harvard University in 2000, after earning his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in 1998.
“I’m deeply honored and enormously proud to serve as co-chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board,” he said. “Recognizing and rewarding excellent work in journalism and arts and letters brings me tremendous pleasure, as does working with such an outstanding and conscientious group of Board members.”
He is the author of “Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform” (Harvard University Press, 2016), which won the 2018 David and Elaine Spitz Prize for best book in liberal or democratic theory and the 2016 Book Award from the North American Society for Social Philosophy. He is also the author of “We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity” (Harvard University Press, 2005). He and Derrick Darby coedited “Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason” (Open Court, 2005). Shelby and Brandon M. Terry coedited “To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.” (Harvard University Press, 2018).
Shelby’s most recent book, to be published in November, is “The Idea of Prison Abolition,” which is based on his 2018 Carl G. Hempel Lectures at Princeton University.
Shelby’s writings focus on racial justice, economic justice, and criminal justice and on the history of Black political thought. His numerous articles have appeared in journals such as Philosophy & Public Affairs, Ethics, Political Theory, Critical Inquiry, Du Bois Review, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Daedalus. He has also written for The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, Boston Review, The Root and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Shelby is former co-editor of Transition, a literary and cultural magazine with a focus on Africa and its Diaspora. He has served as the president of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Shelby lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, journalist and writer Jessie Scanlon, and their two children.
Brown and Shelby joined the Pulitzer Board in 2015.
The Pulitzer Prizes, which are administered at Columbia University, were established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher, who left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. A portion of his bequest was used to found the School of Journalism in 1912 and establish the Pulitzer Prizes, which were first awarded in 1917.
The 19-member board is composed mainly of leading journalists or news executives from media outlets across the U.S., as well as five academics or persons in the arts. The dean of Columbia's journalism school and the administrator of the prizes are nonvoting members. The chair rotates to the most senior member or members. The board is self-perpetuating in the election of members. Voting members may serve three terms of three years for a total of nine years.
