Ari L. Goldman is a professor of journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the author of three books, including the best-selling The Search for God at Harvard.

Professor Goldman came to Columbia in 1993 after spending 20 years at the New York Times, most of it as a religion writer. At Columbia, Professor Goldman is the director of the Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism and the Spiritual Life.

In addition to the New York Times, his articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, the Forward, the New York Jewish Week, the Jerusalem Post and the New York Daily News. He blogs regularly for getreligion.org.

Professor Goldman was born in Hartford, Conn., and was educated at Yeshiva University, Columbia and Harvard. In addition to The Search for God at Harvard (1991), he is author of Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today (2000) and a memoir, Living a Year of Kaddish (2003).

At Columbia, he teaches the popular "Covering Religion" seminar that in recent years has taken students to Israel, Jordan, Russia, Ukraine, India and Ireland. Through his teaching and his travels, he has taught a whole generation of religion writers. His students have gone on to cover religion at such newspapers as the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and the Raleigh News & Observer.

Professor Goldman has been a Fulbright Professor in Israel, a Skirball Fellow at Oxford University in England and a scholar-in-residence at Stern College for Women. He serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Jewish Book Council, the Covenant Foundation and Congregation Ramath Orah, an Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Professor Goldman is an amateur cellist and plays in the New York Late-Starters String Orchestra. He lives in New York City with his wife, Shira Dicker, and their three children, Adam, Emma and Judah.

To contact him, please e-mail alg18@columbia.edu.

Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism