About Us
American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. Contributors are accomplished in fields beyond journalism and animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.
There is no limit to the topics appearing on American Thinker. National security in all its dimensions -- strategic, economic, diplomatic, and military -- is emphasized. The right to exist and the survival of the State of Israel are of great importance to us. Business, science, technology, medicine, management, and economics in their practical and ethical dimensions are also emphasized, as is the state of American culture.
Staff
| Editor and Publisher | — | Thomas Lifson |
| Deputy Editor | — | J.R. Dunn |
| Deputy Editor | — | Drew Belsky |
| Deputy Editor, Graphics consultant (i.e., drop Manager, Social Media) |
— | Monica Showalter |
| Deputy Editor | — | Andrea Widburg |
| Co-founders | — | Richard Baehr, Ed Lasky |
Staff biographies
Thomas Lifson, editor and publisher, calls himself a recovering academic. After graduating from Kenyon College, he studied modern Japan, sociology, and business as a graduate student at Harvard (three degrees) and joined the faculty at Harvard Business School, where he began the consulting career that was to lead him away from academia. He also taught sociology and East Asian studies at Harvard and held visiting professorships at Columbia University and the Japanese National Museum of Ethnology. As a consultant, he has worked with major companies from the United States, Japan, Europe, Asia, and Australasia at the nexus of human, organizational, and strategic issues.
A Democrat by birth, Thomas became more conservative in adulthood as reality taught him that dreams of perfecting human society always run smack into human nature.
In 2003 he founded American Thinker.
Ed Lasky, news editor, is a former lawyer, and now a stock trader. He has degrees from Northwestern University (B.A., economics), University of Michigan Law School (J.D.), and J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management (Northwestern University) (Master of Management).
A read-aholic husband of one and a father of three wonderful kids (twin girls and a son), Ed is focused on politics, media monitoring, and foreign affairs. He started being concerned about the future when he had children. September 11, 2001 was a motivating factor as well. He feels fortunate to live in America.
Ed has appeared on the Milt Rosenberg show in Chicago and a variety of other radio shows (including National Public Radio); has been mentioned in Newsweek and interviewed by the NY Times. Recently he appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News.
Richard Baehr, chief political correspondent, is a management consultant in the health care field and is the president of Richard A. Baehr & Associates. He frequently serves as an expert witness in health care litigation cases involving planning and financial matters. Richard has a longstanding interest in the Middle East and American politics, and he is a frequent speaker and writer on these subjects. He has spoken at many Jewish organization meetings, synagogues, and colleges on various topics: Israeli-Palestinian relations, the war in Lebanon, American politics and Israel, the future of Israel and the Middle East, and American political trends.
Richard was recently named a Visiting Fellow of the Jewish Policy Center, and he was a panelist for a Jewish Policy Center Forum along with Michael Medved, John Podhoretz, and David Horowitz. He has been a guest on many talk radio programs, including those of Michael Medved, Dennis Miller, and Milt Rosenberg. Richard also writes a commentary on the Middle East and American politics which is distributed by e-mail. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Kenyon College. He is married with two adult children.
J.R. Dunn, deputy editor, has been involved in several fields of business including real estate, infotech, and PR. He managed a real estate corporation in Northern New Jersey for a decade beginning in the late '70s (think Glengarry Glen Ross). During the dot-com epoch, he worked at a pioneering Wall Street business database firm until 9/11 wiped out many of the company's clients. In recent years, he has worked for Novita, a New Jersey political PR agency.
As a writer, J.R. has published three critically acclaimed novels: This Side of Judgment (1994), Days of Cain (1997), and Full Tide of Night (1998). He has also published a number of shorts and articles in various magazines and anthologies.
Additionally, J.R. worked on the academic encyclopedia The International Military Encyclopedia (1992- ) as associate editor for twelve years.
His first book on politics deals with the inexplicably overlooked fact that liberal policies (criminal justice "reform," the CAFE standards, the DDT ban, etc.) tend to kill Americans by the tens of thousands. Provisionally titled Death by Liberalism, the book will be appearing later this year.
He is not the British thrash guitarist,
the Texas C&W singer,
the British sword & sorcery novelist,
or the Florida jeweler.
Nor is he the author of the superb "Comparison of NBR with other oil resistant rubbers for automotive applications," widely viewed as standard work in its field.
Drew Belsky, deputy editor, discovered the insanity of leftism by living for several years in New York City and Washington, D.C. He has done editing work for multiple book projects, online publications, and self-publishers."
Monica Showalter, deputy editor and social media manager, is a graduate of the University of San Diego and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is a veteran foreign correspondent and financial journalist, having worked at Investors Business Daily prior to joining American Thinker.