Author Biography | Full-Length Samples
Sweet Land of Liberty
by Nat Hentoff
One of the foremost authorities on the First Amendment, Nat Hentoff also explores our freedoms under the rest of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment by showing how Supreme Court and local legislative decisions affect ordinary Americans every day of their lives. In 1995, Hentoff received the National Press Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism. In 1999, he was a Pulitzer finalist for commentary. He has also been honored with the American Library Association's Imroth Award for Intellectual Freedom and an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award. Hentoff is on the steering committee of the Reporters' Committee for the Freedom of the Press. A columnist and staff writer with The Village Voice from 1957 through 2008, Hentoff now writes for Free Inquiry and the Washington Times, in addition to his NEA column.
A jazz expert, Hentoff writes on music for The Wall Street Journal and Jazz Times. His numerous books include Does Anybody Give a Damn? Nat Hentoff on Education (1977); The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America (1980); and Living the Bill of Rights (1998). His most recent books include The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance (2004) and Jazz Is (2004). He is the author of two more books that will be released in 2009: a sequel to The War on the Bill of Rights called Is this America? and At the Jazz Band Ball: 60 Years on the Jazz Scene (University of California Press).
From 1952-1957, Hentoff was the New York editor of Down Beat magazine. A native of Boston, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Sorbonne in Paris. He did graduate work at Harvard University, received his B.A. from Northeastern University and was awarded an honorary doctorate of law from Northeastern in 1985. He has taught courses in journalism and on the Constitution at Princeton University and New York University.
Current Samples
September 8th, 2010
EDITORS: This is the third in a series about the embattled mosque controversy near Ground Zero.
Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2010
For Immediate Release
SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY
Unifying Muslim community after Ground Zero mosque uproar
By Nat Hentoff
Shortly before returning here after his State Department Mideast tour, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said in Abu Dhabi that the viral furor over his insistence on building a mosque just blocks from Ground Zero was due in large part to the coming midterm elections. Further minimizing his role, he blamed (Associated Press, Aug. 31) "radicals in the Muslim World ... and other faith traditions," and then almost blithely noted that "the story has expanded far beyond a piece of real estate, it has expanded to the issues of Islam in America and what it means for us." (NY Post, Sept. 1)
As I have reported, Islam in many parts of the world beyond America has been affected. Al-Qaida websites cheer the rise of anti-Muslim stereotyping in the ...
September 1st, 2010
EDITORS: This is the second in a series about the embattled mosque controversy near Ground Zero.
Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010
For Immediate Release
SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY
What hath Imam Rauf wrought?
By Nat Hentoff
The source of the firestorm over the mosque at Ground Zero, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, could have located his mosque in New York anywhere he liked if he had not fixated on the spot two blocks north of Ground Zero. During a bitterly divided demonstration at the planned site on Aug. 22, retired firefighter Jack McLaughlin said: "Part of the (bombed) plane landed (here). There's a mosque only four blocks away up Warren Street. So why didn't they build ... there?" (New York Daily News, Aug. 23).
As of this writing, Rauf has not wavered, despite the resulting national furor that has anguished and enraged opponents of the mosque, and, alarmingly, increased hostility toward American Muslims in general -- including those who reject violent jihadism.
Even if ...
August 25th, 2010
EDITORS: This is the first in a series about the embattled mosque controversy near Ground Zero.
Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010
For Immediate Release
SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY
Bitter civil war over mosque at Ground Zero
By Nat Hentoff
The angry national debate over Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's intention to build a mosque two blocks north of the horror of 9/11 at Ground Zero has been further fueled by supporter Nancy Pelosi declaring, "I join those who have called for looking into how ... this opposition to the mosque is being funded."
If one of her sleuths knocks on my door, this opponent will readily state that I need no outside funding as a reporter who is deeply investigating the motivation of Imam Rauf's choice of this site of mass murder for the mosque. I will add that, of course, all American Muslims have their First Amendment right to exercise their freedom of religion in their place of worship. There have been other mosques in New York City built without opposition. ...
August 18th, 2010
Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010
For Immediate Release
SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY
Our privacy is vanishing. Anybody care?
By Nat Hentoff
The American Civil Liberties Union has been persistently diligent -- and accurate -- in alerting us to the ever-increasing government invasion of our privacy. As the ACLU reported on Aug. 11: "The government's appetite for our electronic information is out of control. The National Security Agency is intercepting 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other communications per day."
Both Presidents Bush and Obama firmly support the NSA. Nearly all the Democrats in Congress, now under their control, follow their leader in lockstep on privacy issues. Few Republicans voice Fourth Amendment concerns. And, as I've reported, with the FBI's Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, that agency can conduct "threat" investigations of any American without any reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or intent -- and without having to go before a judge. ...
August 11th, 2010
Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2010
For Immediate Release
SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY
J. Edgar Hoover Obama
By Nat Hentoff
Many Americans may not remember, if they ever knew, that toward the end of the Bush administration, FBI Director Robert Mueller and then Attorney General Michael Mukasey so greatly expanded the "Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations" that now, in Obama's presidency, we have essentially returned to the reign of J. Edgar Hoover, who was convinced that a citizen's right to a private life and to his or her own thoughts could be ignored for national security.
The FBI, with no objection from President Obama, can conduct a "threat assessment" -- an investigation -- on any of us without a judicial warrant or any articulable suspicion of criminal activity. During J. Edgar Hoover's time, there was much public protest and reporting on his erasing of our Fourth Amendment's "right of the people to be secure ... against unreasonable searches and seizures."
Because of my r ...
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