Ethan Michaeli is a Senior Advisor for Communications and Development. A writer, educator and publisher, Ethan is the award-winning author of “The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America,” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) praised by The New York Times as “…a towering achievement that will not be soon forgotten.” “The Defender” was named as a Notable Book of 2016 by The New York Times, the Washington Post and Amazon, awarded the Best Non Fiction of 2016 prizes from the Chicago Writers Association as well as the Midland Authors Association, and the short list of the Mark Lynton Prize.

The NY Times also applauded Ethan’s second book, “Twelve Tribes: Promise and Peril in the New Israel,” (Custom House, 2021), noting that “…illuminating conversations with a wide variety of ordinary people — ultra-Orthodox Jews, Holocaust survivors, aging kibbutzniks, Ethiopian and Russian immigrants, Arab citizens of Israel, Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank — fill the pages of this richly descriptive book.” “Twelve Tribes” includes several chapters on the Goldin Institute’s 2018 trip to Israel and Palestine.

A native of Rochester, New York, Ethan earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Chicago, and worked at The Chicago Daily Defender as a copy editor and investigative reporter from 1991 to 1996. Ethan left The Defenderto found Residents’ Journal, a magazine written and produced by the tenants of Chicago’s public housing developments, and an affiliated not-for-profit organization, We The People Media, which won national recognition, including the 2006 Studs Terkel Award. Ethan currently is a lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy of the University of Chicago, and a frequent judge of literary prizes.