Richard Galant is a Senior Fellow with New America's Future Security Program, and a writer and editor who specializes in American history, government and politics. He is executive producer of Now It’s History, a new platform for essays, newsletter and podcasts exploring the dividing line between the present and the past. His recent work focuses on forms of political leadership and on how the Supreme Court’s evolving interpretations of the U.S. Constitution are playing out in the social and political tensions of our time.
Galant founded the CNN Opinion section and served as its top editor from 2008 to 2024. Under his leadership, CNN Opinion became one of the most popular and engaging sections of the world’s largest news site and published the work of thinkers and leaders including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Jimmy Carter, Melinda Gates, Margaret Atwood, Colin Powell, Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren. As an editor at Newsday and New York Newsday, he led two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams and served as managing editor. Galant was a reporter, editor and columnist. He was instrumental in the expansion of metro and business coverage and directed projects that won numerous awards, including the Bingham Award winner “Rush to Burn,” which was published as a book by Island Press.
Galant earned a master’s degree in philosophy and politics from Oxford University and a bachelor’s in politics from Brandeis. He is a mentor-editor for the OpEd Project, a panel moderator at the Wesleyan University Center for the Study of Guns and Society and a former Pulitzer Prize juror.