Ben Taub, '15 M.A. Politics, Wins 2020 Pulitzer Prize

We are pleased to share that Columbia Journalism School Master of Arts Program alumnus Ben Taub ('15 M.A. Politics) has been awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his New Yorker story "Guantánamo's Darkest Secret," about the friendship between a captive and a guard at the Guantánamo Bay military prison.  

The Pulitzer Prizes jury honored Taub for "a devastating account of a man who was kidnapped, tortured and deprived of his liberty for more than a decade at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, blending on-the-ground reporting and lyrical prose to offer a nuanced perspective on America's wider war on terror." 

Last year, Taub, a 2015 graduate of the Master of Arts Program, Politics Concentration,  won a National Magazine Award and George Polk Award for his New Yorker story "Shallow Graves," which explored how the Iraq government's cruel treatment of suspected jihadis and their families could stoke a resurgence of the terror group ISIS in the country.

Now a staff writer at The New Yorker, Taub began his career at the magazine in 2015, when it published a story based on his Columbia Journalism School master's thesis about European teenagers who chose to join ISIS. 

Columbia Journalism School's one-of-a-kind, nine-month Master of Arts Program uses the world-class resources of Columbia University and New York City to train experienced journalists to go deeper, equipping them with subject-area expertise in one of four concentrations - Arts & Culture, Business & Economics, Politics, and Science - so they can produce ambitious works of journalism that explain complicated issues to the public. 

Please explore our website to learn more about Columbia Journalism School's faculty members, course offerings, and degree programs.

If you would like to make an appointment to speak with a counselor, please email us at apply.journalism@columbia.edu.