Reihan Morshed Salam (pronounced /ˈraɪhɑːn səˈlɑːm/; born December 29, 1979)[1] is an American non-fiction writer and policy analyst. He is a columnist for The Daily and lead writer of National Review's "The Agenda" blog, as well as a policy adviser at e21 and a contributing editor at National Affairs. He has also appeared on a number radio and television shows, including NPR's Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, and Tell Me More, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, NBC Universal's The Chris Matthews Show, WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show, BBC's Newsnight, ABC's This Week, CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, and American Public Media's Marketplace. [2]
Reihan Salam | |
|---|---|
| File:Reihan.jpg | |
| Born | 29 December 1979 |
| Occupation(s) | Author, Journalist |
Early life
Salam was born in Brooklyn. His parents are Bangladeshi-born immigrants who arrived in New York in 1976; his father is an accountant and his mother is a dietician. Salam attended Stuyvesant High School and Cornell University (where he was a TASPer) before transferring to Harvard, where he was a member of the Signet Society. He graduated from Harvard in 2001 with a degree in Social Studies.[3]
Salam is a Muslim. He has also remarked that "I am not an expert on Islam" and "I wouldn’t say I’m a very religiously observant person".[4]
Salam's parents worked in the World Trade Center in the 1980s. Salam has written, "Some of my fondest memories of growing up involve visiting them at work, and watching the 4th of July fireworks display from my dad’s office window." Those memories later fed into his personal horror at the September 11th attacks.[4]
Like many New Yorkers, Salam does not drive.[5]
Professional life
Salam worked as a reporter-researcher at The New Republic and as an editor and researcher at The New York Times, first with columnist David Brooks and then on the paper's Op-Ed page. He was a producer for NBC's The Chris Matthews Show, an associate editor at The Atlantic, and wrote a regular column for The Daily Beast and Forbes.com. With Ross Douthat and Steve Menashi, he co-founded the conservative blog The American Scene, which he continues to edit.
Salam was a Schwartz fellow at The New America Foundation, where he researched "how radical technological advances are changing the way we live and think, and in particular how the advent of machine intelligence and the ongoing genomics revolution will shape our understanding of democracy and equality."
Grand New Party
He co-authored Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream[3] with Ross Douthat. The book grew from an influential cover story for The Weekly Standard, which called for a reinvention of Republican domestic policy.[6]
The Republican party, Salam and Douthat argued, had become "out of touch with its own base," and its Bush-era, big-government policies were "an evolutionary dead end." Salam and Douthat instead advocated "tak[ing] the 'big-government conservatism' vision" of Bush and giving it "coherence and sustainability" by vigorously serving the interests of the less affluent voters who had become the party's base. The platform would include "an economic policy that places the two-parent family--the institution best capable of providing cultural stability and economic security--at the heart of the GOP agenda."[7]
Political views and style
Salam is an unorthodox conservative. He has written that he intends to "pump ideas into the bloodstream" of American conservatism."
I write in the hope and expectation that people read people
with whom they disagree to challenge their settled views. Suffice it to say, this isn’t generally the case, but I’m happy to continue behaving as though it is, as it is true of enough people to justify
the effort.
He strongly supported the Iraq war but has since called it (possibly with overstatement for rhetorical effect) a disaster of "world-historical proportions." He advocates policies that strengthen traditional family structure but has supported gay marriage for years. He has described as "brilliant" such diverse figures as Canadian Marxist philosopher G. A. Cohen, Reagan adviser and neoclassical economist Martin Feldstein, and the mutant super-villain Magneto.
Among other things, Salam has taken a strong interest in congestion pricing and the encouragement of denser living arrangements, the promotion of natural gas and nuclear power, reform of the U.S. tax code, and the fostering of a more competitive and diverse marketplace of educational providers.[8]
References
- ^ http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/16598
- ^ "Reihan Salam". The Daily Scene. The Daily Scene. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
- ^ "New Star Rising", Razib Khan profiles Reihan Salam at The Daily Star (Bangladesh)
- ^ a b Brief Note Re: the Cordoba House Controversy
- ^ http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2008/10/30/reihan-salam-plan-gop/politics/
- ^ Continetti, Matthew. "The Grand New Party". Weekly Standard. Weekly Standard. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
- ^ "The Grand New Party". Google Books. Google Books. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
- ^ Salam, Reihan (24 June 2009). "Inner Neocons". The American Scene. Retrieved 9 January 2010.
External links
- Profile of Salam at TheAmericanScene.com
- Profile of Salam at The New America Foundation site
- Slate articles by Salam
- Video debates featuring Reihan Salam on Bloggingheads.tv
- Reihan Salam at IMDb
- "They're Young, They're Bright, They Tilt to the Right" A conversation with Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam from n+1