Ari Goldman

Ari L. Goldman taught at Columbia as a professor of journalism for more than 30 years until his retirement in 2024. 

When he first came to Columbia to teach in 1993, Professor Goldman created the school’s Covering Religion seminar, which later gained the financial support of the Scripps Howard Fund. The fund enabled Professor Goldman to take students in the Covering Religion seminar on study-tours abroad during spring break. Over 20 years of travel, his class visited India, Russia, Ukraine, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Italy, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories. To learn more about these trips, visit the class blog. 

Ari Goldman was educated at Yeshiva University, Harvard and Columbia. He is a 1973 graduate of the Journalism School and spent 20 years at The New York Times, most of it as a religion writer, before returning to Columbia to teach. Although he spent most of his time in the classroom, he also spent a year as Dean of Students and another year as acting Academic Dean.

Professor Goldman has been a Visiting Fulbright Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem; a Skirball Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in England, and a scholar-in-residence at Yeshiva’s Stern College for Women.

He is the author of four books including the best-selling memoir, “The Search for God at Harvard.” He has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Religion News Association and with an Alumni Award from Columbia Journalism.

In addition to his teaching at the university level, Goldman is on the faculty of the School of The New York Times where his course, “Writing the Big City: Covering New York,” is one of the most popular offerings. It is open to high school students of all ages.

He occasionally contributes articles, obituaries and reviews to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, The New York Jewish Week, the Forward, Tradition and the Jesuit magazine America.

See Professor Goldman being interviewed on the CNN program “Amanpour” with his Covering Religion colleague Professor Gregory Khalil.

See Professors Goldman and Khalil interviewed on CBS News.

Here are recent articles by Professor Goldman from The New York Times.

Web feature: A Day in the Life: Four Hours With Ari Goldman