David Chanoff

David Chanoff received his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Brandeis University. He has written on current affairs, foreign policy, education, refugee issues, literary history, healthcare and other subjects for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Washington Quarterly, The American Journal of Education, Medscape, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, and The American Scholar. He is a featured writer in the Washington Post’s anthology The Writing Life and his work appears in the Norton Reader Anthology of Nonfiction (12 th edition). His academic affiliations have been with Tufts University, The Helsinki University of Technology, Boston College, and Brandeis University in fields as varied as psychology, English language and literature, and anthropology. His twenty-six books include collaborations with former surgeon general Dr. Joycelyn Elders, healthcare disparities expert Dr. Augustus White, former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. William Crowe and former secretary of health and human services Dr. Louis Sullivan. Several of his books have been included among the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Among his more recent publications, his collaboration with Louis Sullivan [Breaking Ground] was named the NAACP’s Best Biography/Autobiography of 2014. Spies in the Family (with Eva Dillon) received the Association of Former Intelligence Officers award as Best Intelligence Book of 2017.

We’ll Fight It Out Here, a history of Black health and healthcare going back to pre-emancipation times, was published by The Johns Hopkins University Press in October, 2022 and received the 2023 Phillis Wheatley prize for history from the Sons & Daughters of the U.S. Middle Passage. Anthony Benezet: Quaker, Abolitionist, Anti-Racist, about the 18th-century Philadelphia Quaker who led the campaign against the Atlantic slave trade, will be published by the University of Georgia Press in 2025. From Crisis to Calling, a collaboration with his son Sasha, is about moral decision-making at critical moments of life. Dr. Chanoff is currently a visiting research scholar at Brandeis University.