Emily Bazelon

Early life and education

Bazelon was born on March 4, 1971 and grew up in Philadelphia. Her father was an attorney and her mother was a psychiatrist. She attended Germantown Friends School, where she was on the tennis team. She has three sisters: Jill Bazelon, who founded an organization that provides financial literacy classes free of charge to low-income high school students and individuals in several cities; Lara Bazelon, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and prominent advocate for overturning wrongful convictions; and Dana Bazelon, senior policy counsel to Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner. Her family is Jewish and not especially religious; she said in an interview, "I was raised to see Judaism in terms of ethical precepts."

Bazelon is the granddaughter of David L. Bazelon, formerly a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and second cousin twice removed of feminist Betty Friedan.

Bazelon graduated from Yale College in 1993, where she was managing editor of The New Journal. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2000 and was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She held the Dorot Fellowship in Israel from 1993 to 1994. After law school she worked as a law clerk for Judge Kermit Lipez of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Journalism career

Bazelon is a writer for The New York Times Magazine and former senior editor of Slate. She has written on subjects such as voting rights, the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Guantanamo detainee due process trial and the alleged post-abortion syndrome. Her work as a writer focuses on law, women, and family issues.

Before joining Slate, Bazelon was a senior editor of Legal Affairs. Her writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, and other publications.

Bazelon is also a senior research scholar in Law and the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School.

Between 2012 and 2014, Bazelon made eight appearances on The Colbert Report on Comedy Central to discuss the Supreme Court and also anti-bullying issues.

Writing on bullying

Bazelon wrote a series on bullying and cyberbullying for Slate, called "Bull-E". She was nominated for the 2011 Michael Kelly Award for her story "What Really Happened to Phoebe Prince?" The three-part article is about the suicide of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in January 2010, and the decision by the local prosecutor to bring criminal charges against six teenagers in connection with this death. The Michael Kelly Award, sponsored by the Atlantic Media Co., "honors a writer or editor whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly's own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth." Bazelon's series also sparked heated reaction and a response from district attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, who brought the charges against the six teenagers.

Bazelon authored a book about bullying and school climate published by Random House, titled Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. It received a front page The New York Times Book Review review, which called the book "intelligent" and "rigorous", and described the author as "nonjudgmental in a generous rather than simply neutral way," and "a compassionate champion for justice in the domain of childhood’s essential unfairness." In The Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Gurdon called Sticks and Stones a "humane and closely reported exploration of the way that hurtful power relationships play out in the contemporary public-school setting".

Writing on abortion

Bazelon has reported critically on the anti-abortion movement and opponents of legal abortion, including "pro-life feminists" and proponents of the concept of post-abortion syndrome, and abortion-rights federal judges. She has described crisis pregnancy centers as being "all about bait-and-switch" and "falsely maligning" the abortion procedure. Bazelon has discussed her support for legal abortion on the Double X blog.

Writing on criminal justice

In 2018 and 2019, Bazelon published a number of articles on criminal justice reform. Her book Charged focuses on the role of prosecutors, the history of "tough on crime" politics in elections for that office, and the new generation of reformist prosecutors. David Lat in the New York Times called it a "persuasive indictment of prosecutorial excess".

Ruth Bader Ginsburg interview controversy

In July 2009, the New York Times Magazine published Bazelon's interview with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Discussing her view of Roe v. Wade in 1973, Ginsburg commented, "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion."

Bazelon did not ask any follow-up question to what some interpreted as Ginsburg endorsing a eugenics-based rationale for legalized abortion, i.e., as a remedy for "populations that we don't want to have too many of." Bazelon was criticized by some conservative commentators for not doing so. Bazelon responded to the criticism, stating that she is "imperfect" and did not ask a follow-up question because she believed that Ginsburg's use of "we" had referred to "some people at the time, not [Ginsburg] herself or a group that she feels a part of."

The interview was cited in the United States House of Representatives' Committee Report in support of the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2012.

Transgender article controversy

In June 2022, Bazelon published an article in The New York Times on gender-affirming health-care, titled "The Battle Over Gender Therapy". Bazelon interviewed parents from gender-critical organization Genspect who defined the rise in transgender-identified children as a "gender cult" and mass craze, "suggesting that exposure to transgender kids, education about trans people, and trans ideas on the internet could spread transness to others". Some parents from Genspect stated transgender people should not be able to transition until the age of 25. The article also referenced a Substack newsletter by an anonymous Genspect parent titled "It's Strategy People!" about how the organisation gets its perspective into news media by purposefully not referring to transgender children as "mentally ill" or "deluded".

PinkNews accused the article of "uncritically platform[ing] gender-critical group Genspect" and of spreading "vile rhetoric".

The article was covered on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC as part of "a debate from within the medical community that provides care for trans teenagers who seek to transition" and on Press Play on KCRW, which pointed out that "a growing right-wing backlash to gender-affirming care further complicates the debate."

The article was also used in legal cases involving transgender health-care. In February, 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed state agencies to investigate and limit gender-affirming health-care for transgender minors. In a subsequent lawsuit challenging this directive, the state of Texas hired controversial sexologist James Cantor as an expert witness. In his report, Cantor cited Bazelon's article as supporting evidence. The article was also cited approvingly by seventeen Republican state Attorneys General supporting the State of Florida's move to bar gender therapy or transitional treatment from being reimbursed with federal Medicaid Funds; these states are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

In 2023, the Missouri Attorney General cited the article in an emergency order to implement a de facto ban on transgender health-care for all ages.

Personal life

Bazelon lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband Paul Sabin, a professor of history and American studies at Yale. They are members of a Reform synagogue.

Honors and awards

Bazelon was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

In 2020, Bazelon's book Charged won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the current interest category and the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association. It was also a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from the New York Public Library.

References

References

1. Bazelon, Emily. (2014). "Sticks and stones : defeating the culture of bullying and rediscovering the power of character and empathy". Random House Trade Paperbacks.
2. "Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration". Penguin Random House.
3. (April 17, 2020). "2020 Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association". Los Angeles Times.
4. "American Bar Association names 2020 Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts (press release, May 20, 2020)".
5. "Winners and finalists of the 2020 Lukas Prize Project Awards announced". The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
6. "2020 Bernstein Awards Finalist Spotlight: 'Charged' by Emily Bazelon". The New York Public Library.
7. Bazelon, Emily. (April 12, 2012). "What's Your Earliest Memory?". [[Slate (magazine).
8. Politico Staff. (March 4, 2019). "BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Emily Bazelon, staff writer for the NYT Magazine, co-host of the 'Slate Political Gabfest' and Truman Capote fellow at Yale Law School".
9. (September 12, 2013). "Social, legal facets of bullying topic for author, Yale law grad". Arizona Jewish Post.
10. "Germantown Friends: News » The Ninny State: The Danger of Overprotecting Your Kids from Technology". germantownfriends.org.
11. (November 1, 1988). "Stenstrom wins PIAA District 1 championship". [[The Philadelphia Inquirer]].
12. (February 28, 2013). "Let's talk about bullies". Philly.com.
13. (April 11, 2012). "Classes in financial literacy open eyes, doors". [[The Philadelphia Inquirer]].
14. (May 26, 2016). "Lara Bazelon - Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Juvenile Justice Clinic and the Racial Justice Clinic".
15. (May 4, 2018). "D.A. makes way for people to clear records". The Philadelphia Tribune.
16. "Emily Bazelon".
17. [http://www.bazelon.org/about/inbrief/summer03.pdf ''In Brief''] {{Webarchive. link. (November 28, 2008 , Summer 2003, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.)
18. Bazelon, Emily. (February 5, 2006). "Shopping With Betty". Slate.
19. . (January 19, 2004). ["OSI Awards More Than $1.5 Million Nationwide to Winners of 2004 Soros Justice Fellowships"](https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/newsroom/osi-awards-more-15-million-nationwide-winners-2004-soros-justice-fellowships).
20. "Dorot Fellows". dorot.org.
21. New York Times Press Release. (September 2, 2014). "Emily Bazelon joins New York Times". The New York Times.
22. "Emily Bazelon".
23. [http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2004/feature_bazelon_janfeb04.msp The Big Kozinski] {{Webarchive. link. (August 6, 2018 , ''[[Legal Affairs]]'', Emily Bazelon, February 2005. Retrieved August 5, 2018.)
24. Bazelon, Emily. (March 27, 2006). "Invisible Men : Did Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl mislead the Supreme Court?". Slate.
25. Bazelon, Emily. (January 21, 2007). "Is There a Post-Abortion Syndrome?". The New York Times.
26. [http://www.slate.com/id/117517/ List of ''Slate'' contributors] {{webarchive. link. (June 23, 2011)
27. (November 13, 2014). "Emily Bazelon: Reforming Health-Care Reform". Comedy Central.
28. Bazelon, Emily. (January 26, 2010). "Bull-E: The new world of online cruelty.". Slate.
29. Romenesko, Jim. (April 7, 2011). "Michael Kelly Award finalists named". The Poynter Institute.
30. Bazelon, Emily. (July 20, 2010). "What Really Happened to Phoebe Prince?". Slate.
31. "The Michael Kelly Award". The Atlantic Media Co..
32. Lohr, David. (July 23, 2010). "Revelations Stir New Debate Over Phoebe Prince Suicide". [[archive.is]].
33. Bazelon, Emily. (July 22, 2010). "Blaming the Victim". Slate.
34. Boog, Jason. (November 10, 2010). "Emily Bazelon Lands Book Deal for Bullying Investigation". Media Bistro GalleyCat Blog.
35. (March 10, 2013). "Words That Hurt and Kill: Lessons for Society From Bullying and Its Psychic Toll". The New York Times.
36. Solomon, Andrew. (February 28, 2013). "The Brutal Years". The New York Times.
37. Gurdon, Meghan Cox. (February 22, 2013). "The Cruelty of Youth". Wall Street Journal.
38. [http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/01/suffragette-city "Suffragette City"] {{Webarchive. link. (September 18, 2009 , E. Bazelon, ''[[Mother Jones (magazine)). Mother Jones]]'', Jan.-Feb. 2007.
39. Bazelon, Emily. (July 14, 2010). "The New Abortion Providers". [[The New York Times Magazine]].
40. Bazelon, Emily. (April 13, 2010). "Defining Radical Down". Slate.
41. [http://www.slate.com/id/2236707/pagenum/all/#p2 "Sign Them Up"], E. Bazelon, ''Slate'', November 25, 2009.
42. [http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/the-politics-of-pregnancy-counseling/ "The Politics of Pregnancy Counseling"], [[Ross Douthat. R. Douthat]], ''New York Times Opinion'' blog, December 3, 2009.
43. Bazelon, Emily. (August 19, 2010). "The Feminist Establishment Rejects the Mama Grizzlies". Double X.
44. Bazelon, Emily. (September 26, 2018). "Will Florida's Ex-Felons Finally Regain the Right to Vote?". [[The New York Times Magazine]].
45. (December 11, 2018). "There's a Wave of New Prosecutors. And They Mean Justice.". [[The New York Times]].
46. (April 8, 2019). "How Tough-on-Crime Prosecutors Contribute to Mass Incarceration". [[The New York Times]].
47. Bazelon, Emily. (July 7, 2009). "The Place of Women on the Court". The New York Times Magazine.
48. Gerson, Michael. (July 17, 2009). "Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Comments on Abortion in the New York Times". Washington Post.
49. Goldberg, Jonah. (July 15, 2009). "Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a Question of Eugenics". Jewish World Review.
50. Henneberger, Melinda. (July 17, 2009). "Why Emily Bazelon Didn't Follow Up on Ginsburg's Abortion Comment". archive.is.
51. "H. Rept. 112-496 - PRENATAL NONDISCRIMINATION ACT (PRENDA) OF 2012".
52. (June 15, 2022). "The Battle Over Gender Therapy". The New York Times.
53. (July 22, 2022). "There Is No Legitimate 'Debate' Over Gender-Affirming Healthcare".
54. (June 16, 2022). "New York Times faces searing backlash for publishing 'harmful' anti-trans 'propaganda': 'Do better'".
55. (June 15, 2022). "How Politics is Intruding on Medical Gender Therapy". WNYC.
56. (June 15, 2022). "Why are doctors pulling away from gender-affirming health care?". KCRW.
57. Mark, Julian. (February 23, 2022). "Texas governor directs state agencies to investigate gender-affirming care for trans youths as 'child abuse'". The Washington Post.
58. Goldenstein, Taylor. (2022-07-09). "Texas judge blocks two CPS investigations of transgender health care for kids".
59. [http://files.eqcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Cantor-Expert-Report_Ds-TI-response.pdf "Expert Report Of Dr. James Cantor,"] NO.D-1-GN-22-002569, District Travis County 459th Judicial District, Pflag, Inc., et al. v. Greg Abbott, et al.
60. [https://www.scribd.com/document/637650316/Dekker-v-Weida-Amicus-Brief-by-17-AGs# "Brief of (States) as Amici Curiae in support of Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment,"] ''Dekker v. Weida'', Case. No. 4:22-cv-00325, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.
61. "Missouri AG Directly Cites the New York Times' Anti-Trans Coverage To Justify Horrific New Ban". The Mary Sue.
62. [http://history.yale.edu/people/paul-sabin ''Paul Sabin''], Yale Department of History. Retrieved May 20, 2017.
63. Keller, Emma G.. (May 6, 2013). "Emily Bazelon's fair-minded feminism: 'I don't think there's anything missing'". The Guardian.
64. "2019 Fellows and International Honorary Members with their affiliations at the time of election".
65. (April 17, 2020). "Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Winners Announced". The Los Angeles Times.
66. "2020 Gavel Award Winners".
67. "Winners and finalists of the 2020 Lukas Prize Project Awards announced". The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
68. "2020 Bernstein Awards Finalist Spotlight: 'Charged' by Emily Bazelon". The New York Public Library.