Newhouse Professor Harriet Brown Selected as 2024-2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar

Harriet Brown, a professor of magazine, news and digital journalism (MND) at the Newhouse School, has been chosen as a 2024-2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar. She will take her Fulbright semester in Israel during spring 2025. 

Brown’s Fulbright award is a combination teaching and research grant. During her time in Israel, she will teach a class at the University of Haifa and report on an ongoing project with photographer Lynn Johnson that looks at families who use cannabis to help their medically fragile children. Syracuse University Press has tentatively agreed to publish a book based on the reporting, Brown said. 

Brown cited one of the reasons she applied for the competitive fellowship was, that even before the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, “it was becoming less and less politically acceptable to be a Jewish American academic with connections to Israel. This is even more true now. I hope to build some bridges between Israeli and American academics and journalists.” 

The prestigious Fulbright Scholar Awards allow recipients to teach and lead research abroad, while also helping to play an essential role in U.S. public diplomacy by forming long-term relationships between people and countries.  

In announcing the award, the Fulbright program said they hope Syracuse University can use Brown’s engagement in Israel to establish research and relationships, interact with University alumni and more. 

Brown, also the MND graduate program director at Newhouse, has more than 30 years of experience as both a writer and editor for many national magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, O Magazine, Vogue, Psychology Today, Prevention and Parenting. 

In 2011, she was awarded the John F. Murray Award for Strategic Communication for the Public Good by the University of Iowa Journalism School. 

Brown has written several books, including “Shadow Daughter: A Memoir of Estrangement,” “Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia” and “Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—and What We Can Do About It.”