Nina Burleigh

Nina Burleigh
Born	1959/1960 Chicago, Illinois
Education	Masters in English (1987)
Alma mater	University of Chicago
Occupation	Author, journalist, adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University
Spouse(s)	Erik Freeland
Children	2
Website	www.ninaburleigh.com

Nina D. Burleigh (born 1959 or 1960)^[1] is an American writer and journalist.^[2] She is the author of five books, including Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt (2007), about the scholars who accompanied Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798; Unholy Business (2008), chronicling a Biblical archaeological forgery case and the Jerusalem relic trade. Her investigative journalism includes The Fatal Gift of Beauty (2011), on the wrongful imprisonment of American student Amanda Knox. An adjunct professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Burliegh is strongly sympathetic to secular liberalism, and known for her interest in issues of women's rights. She wrote a column for The New York Observer called "The Bombshell".^[3] As of January 2015 she writes for Newsweek as a National Politics Correspondent.^[4]

Early life

Her father is author Robert Burleigh, and was a University of Chicago professor.^[5] Burleigh's family moved to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco when she was seven. After a few months in San Francisco, they moved to Baghdad to live with Burleigh's maternal grandmother. Six months later the family moved to an Amish area of Michigan.^[6] They always celebrated Christmas with Santa and a tree, Burleigh stated that her family had "rejected institutional religion" by the time she grew up in the 1970s. "No baptism, no family Bible recording the births, deaths and marriages. My grandfather actively despised churches."^[7]

Her first publication was for a library in Elgin, Illinois, when she was in sixth grade.^[8]

Career

As of January 2015 she is the National Politics Correspondent for Newsweek.^[9] "In college I thought I might go into fiction writing, but a professor of mine…suggested I could get paid as a journalism intern at the Illinois Statehouse, through a program called the Public Affairs Reporting Program. I got an internship at the Associated Press, and learned a lot about government and writing journalism there”.^[6] Burleigh covered the White House and Congress for People and Time in the 1990s.^[10][11]

She was a staff writer at People magazine in New York, covering human interest stories nationally in the 2000s (decade).^[12] She is an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University, wrote "The Bombshell" column for the New York Observer, and was a contributing editor to Elle. She is an occasional blogger at The Huffington Post.^[13] She has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers, including Time magazine,^[14] The New York Times,^[15] The New Yorker,^[16] and The Washington Post, as well as many websites such as Slate.com, TomPaine.com, AlterNet, Powell's^[17] and Salon.com.^[18]

Controversy

In a 1998 essay for Mirabella, Burleigh described an occasion aboard Air Force One when she noticed President Bill Clinton apparently looking at her legs, the piece led to her being described as "the Ally McBeal of former White House reporters" by columnist Ellen Goodman. Approached by a Washington Post media reporter to discuss the Mirabella article, Burleigh's on-the-record-remarks commending Clinton's policy on abortion rights were widely considered the most sexually explicit ever made by a premier journalist, writing that “I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”.^[19][20] Referring to the comment in a 2007 piece for The Huffington Post, Burleigh wrote, "I said it (back in 1998, but a good quote has eternal life) because I thought it was high time for someone to tweak the white, middle-aged beltway gang taking Clinton to task for sexual harassment. These men had neither the personal experience nor the credentials to know sexual harassment when they saw it, nor to give a good goddamn about it if they did. The insidious use of sexual harassment laws to bring down a president for his pro-female politics was the context in which I spoke."^[21]

Women's issues

Burleigh has written extensively on feminism, issues of human trafficking,^[22] domestic violence,^[23] and double standards for violence against women,^[24][25] American women and power and politics.^[26][27][28] She coined the term "Baby Palins” to refer to the young right wing women who decry feminism while benefiting from its gains.^[29][30] She has written that "misogyny is the last allowable taboo in our PC world".^[31][32] She has also written on women and health care and reproductive law^[33][34] as well as the issues and complications of adoption.^[35][36][37]

Middle East

Burleigh has written about her visits to Iraq, her mother's country of birth, both as a child and later in life as a journalist.^[38] She worked in the Middle East for many years, including covering the politics of the Israeli settlements for Time Magazine, the emerging effect of Islamists on women in the wake of the Arab Spring for Slate and Time, and the politics and science of Biblical archaeology in Israel for her book Unholy Business and for the Los Angeles Times.^[39][40]

Biblical archaeology

Burleigh spent several years working on a book about Biblical archaeology and forgery in Israel. The Wall Street Journal said, “Burleigh uses the story of the James Ossuary to trace the eccentric and sometimes dodgy characters who buy, trade and deal in antiquities. But it is also a springboard for her larger meditation on the field of biblical archaeology. In the 19th century, when the discipline emerged, practitioners saw themselves as both religious pilgrims and serious scholars, perceiving no potential for conflict in their desire to prove the historicity of the Bible. It has only been in recent decades that biblical archaeology truly widened its scope and began to focus not only on the Bible but on the larger world in which biblical events unfolded.”^[41]

She has written and lectured on the subject of Biblical archaeology both in her book and elsewhere, speaking on the topic at the Center for Inquiry,^[42] in Los Angeles,^[43] Washington, D.C., and New York,^[44][45] as well as at the Oriental Institute^[46] in Chicago and at Duke University’s Seminar on Biblical archaeology and the media.

Amanda Knox case and Italy

In June 2009 Burleigh and her family moved to the Italian city of Perugia, where Knox was being tried on a murder charge, to write a book. Burleigh initially intended the story to be an exploration of young women's experiences and media portrayal in the modern world.^[47] Within a month Burleigh concluded that much of what was commonly believed about Knox was without foundation, and began to question whether she was in any way involved in the killing. The book strongly advocated the case for the by-then-convicted Knox's innocence, and became a NYT bestseller. Burleigh said she was in some ways uncomfortable with the degree of media concentration on the case, as there were miscarriages of justice affecting all communities.^[48]

Burleigh has written extensively about many other aspects of travel and life in Italy, including Chinese immigration, mafia slave labor,^[49] gelato school,^[50] expatriates and the Gothic.^[51]

Personal life

In 1999 she married Erik Freeland, a freelance photojournalist. They and their two children live in New York City.^[52] When her son was a toddler, Burleigh thought it might be a good idea to expose her child to church. She picked out the most picturesque one she could find in her town and visited. She discovered that the inside was very beautiful with stained glass windows, but the programs she picked up changed her mind, they were "urging parishioners to contact their lawmakers about fetal rights, gay marriage and other favorite fundamentalist issues. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I gathered up the toddler, who was fascinated by the place and didn't want to leave, and scurried back into daylight."^[7]

Burleigh speaking at CFI DC Voices of Reason, December 14, 2008

Books

• A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Mary Meyer (1998): about Mary Pinchot Meyer ISBN 978-0553380514
• The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams and the Making of America's Greatest Museum ISBN 0-06-000241-7
• Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt (2007) ISBN 978-0060597689 about Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. Selected by The New York Times as an editors' choice^[53] and by Delta Kappa Gamma Society International for the 2008 Educator's Award.^[54]
• Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land (2008) ISBN 0061458457 about James Ossuary. Burleigh has lectured on Unholy Business at the Oriental Institute, Chicago.^[55]
• The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox (August 2011) ISBN 978-0307588593

References

External links

• Media related to Nina Burleigh at Wikimedia Commons
• Official website
• HuffingtonPost.com Blog
• Alternet Articles
• New York Magazine Articles
• New York Observer Articles
• Appearances on C-SPAN