John Leo

John Leo, who passed away in 2022, was formerly senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the editor of MindingTheCampus.com, a webmagazine dedicated to chronicling developments within higher education in an effort to restore balance and intellectual pluralism to our American universities. He was also a contributing editor at the Institute’s City Journal. His popular column, “On Society,” ran in U.S.News & World Report for 17 years, and was syndicated to 140 newspapers through the Universal Press Syndicate.

Leo worked as a senior writer for Time magazine, and as a staff reporter for the New York Times specializing in intellectual trends and the social sciences. Among other position he held were assistant administrator of New York City’s environmental protection administration, editor of a Catholic newspaper in Iowa, associate editor of Commonweal, book editor of the social science journal Trans-Action (now Society), and “Press Clips” columnist for the Village Voice.

Leo also served as a member of the ACLU church-state committee and as a member, for ten years, of the Columbia Journalism Review’s board of advisers. He taught a summer course in non-fiction writing at Southampton College. He was the author of three books, most recently “Incorrect Thoughts.”