Adam Harris is an award-winning journalist and author. He writes across books, essays and poems about history, politics, education, and the American South.
He is currently a senior fellow with New America’s Education Policy program.
His first book, The State Must Provide: Why America’s Colleges Have Always Been Unequal—and How to Set Them Right (Ecco, 2021), traced the history of racial inequality in American higher education and was named one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year, earning praise from The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. His second book, Is This America? (Pantheon, forthcoming), is a narrative history of the South’s role in shaping national politics — how the region has repeatedly defined the trajectory of the nation, both through its contradictions and its possibilities.
Alongside his nonfiction, Harris’s poetry explores memory and the ordinary intimacies of family life — the small moments that mark the passage of time and reveal the quiet weight of inheritance.
From 2018 to 2024, he was a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered higher education and national politics, wrote feature stories on the South, led and featured on live event panels, appeared in Shadowland, a documentary about the ways conspiracy theories are proliferating in America, and occasionally guest-hosted the Radio Atlantic podcast. His reporting and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, and EBONY.
In addition to his writing, Harris is represented as a keynote speaker by The Lavin Agency, and has given talks at universities and conferences across the country. He was the 2022–2023 writer-in-residence at North Carolina A&T University, a 2021 National Fellow at New America, and was named to Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list the same year.
Books
The State Must Provide: Why America’s College Have Always Been Unequal—And How to Set Them Right (Ecco, 2021)
Is This America? (Pantheon, forthcoming)
Awards and Honors
2022-23 Writer-in Residence at North Carolina A&T University
2021 New America Fellow
2021 Forbes 30 Under 30
2018 News Media Alliance Rising Star Award
“He's the kind of journalist we most need: meticulous in his research, careful in his thinking, passionate in his vision.”
— George Packer