The Program in Journalism at Princeton University will welcome seven visiting professors for the 2025-26 academic year. These notable visitors include writers, reporters, podcasters, and translators whose work has been nationally and internationally recognized. They will bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the program, helping students to tell stories of impact and navigate the changing media landscape.
Each visiting professor will teach an intensive course in journalism or creative nonfiction within the Humanities Council, the academic home of the long-running Ferris and McGraw Seminars.
Next year’s courses will introduce students to the fundamentals of reporting, storytelling, and podcasting, address media narratives about race and mental health, and explore storytelling about the ongoing climate crisis. These classes are open to students across all concentrations and fulfill requirements toward the new minor in journalism.
“We are delighted to be welcoming such a distinguished roster of journalists,” said Eliza Griswold, director of the Program in Journalism. “Their commitment to their work and to our students exemplifies a robust new era of our journalism minor program.”
Rozina Ali is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine. She writes about conflict, the Middle East and South Asia, Islamophobia, and immigration in the United States. She is currently writing a book about the rise of Islamophobia in the U.S. In the fall, she will teach “The Media and Social Issues: Challenging the Narrative on Race,” which will explore how the media can reinforce or dispel stereotypes about minority groups.
Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the co-host of Critics at Large, the magazine’s weekly podcast about culture and the arts. His debut novel, “Great Expectations,” came out in 2024. In his second year in the program at Princeton, he will teach the spring 2026 McGraw Seminar in Writing, which will focus on the many ways that journalism and creative nonfiction can tell stories about people.
JoAnn DeLuna is a journalist, audio producer, Spanish translator, and poet. She has produced, managed, and launched shows for outlets including NPR, Sony, Pharrell Williams’ OTHERtone, Pushkin, TED Audio Collective, and more. Her English and Spanish poetry is published in anthologies in California, New York and Texas. She will teach the fall seminar “Audio Journalism: The Fundamentals of Podcasting,” where students will gain important skills from pitch to broadcast.
Carolyn Kormann is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and has covered the environment, climate change, and biodiversity from locations across the world. She is the author of the forthcoming book, “How to Be a Bat,” a work of natural history, scientific inquiry, and reportage about the Earth’s only flying mammals. Her fall undergraduate course, “The Literature of Fact: Reporting the Anthropocene,” will introduce students to the climate crisis and how journalists tell its stories.
David Kushner is a journalist, author, and podcaster. His books include “Masters of Doom,” “Levittown,” the graphic novel “Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master,” and his memoir “Alligator Candy,” which he adapted into a serial podcast. He wrote and directed the audio drama “Dungeon Masters” starring Jon Hamm. During his second appointment as a Visiting Ferris Professor, he will teach a spring 2026 seminar on narrative nonfiction writing and reporting.
Kevin Sack is a journalist who has written broadly about national affairs for more than four decades. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church” which will be published in June 2025. His Spring 2026 course, “America’s Racial Narrative” will use race relations as a template to explore and practice a variety of genres of nonfiction writing.
Judith Warner is a writer whose works of non-fiction have ranged from political biography to social history. Her columns, articles, reviews, and news features have appeared regularly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. Her fall seminar, “Reading and Writing About Mental Illness,” will explore the ways that the media have contributed to prejudicial narratives about people with mental illness and the professionals who treat them.
This cohort of visitors will teach alongside the Program in Journalism’s recurring faculty and scholars, including Griswold and Deborah Amos, Ferris Professor of Journalism in Residence.
In the fall, Amos will teach “International News: Migration Reporting,” which will include a reporting trip during break to Berlin, Germany. Griswold will co-lead a fall Freshman Seminar titled “Why I Write” with Abdul Wahid Wafa, professional specialist in the Humanities Council and the Program in Journalism. In the spring, she will teach a seminar on investigative journalism.
For more information about the 2025-26 visiting faculty and a list of journalism courses offered in the fall, please visit the Program in Journalism website.
Princeton’s journalism courses were inaugurated in 1957 by a bequest from former New York Herald journalist Edwin F. Ferris. They have since become some of the nation’s most respected journalism seminars—as well as some of the University’s most highly rated classes. In 2018, the faculty voted unanimously to approve transforming the seminars into a formal academic program.
