Ari L. Goldman, a nationally recognized expert in religion and journalism, is the author of three books, including the best-selling The Search for God at Harvard. He serves as a tenured professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he is the director of the Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism and the Spiritual Life. Professor Goldman came to Columbia in 1993 after spending 20 years at The New York Times, most of it as a religion writer.

In addition to The Search for God at Harvard (1991), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Professor Goldman is author of: Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today (2000) and Living a Year of Kaddish (2003). He is currently editing and completing a novel, The Prophet's Wife, that was written by the late Rabbi Milton Steinberg (the renown author of As A Driven Leaf). The new novel will be published by Behrman House in 2006. Professor Goldman's next book will be a biography of one of the father's of Jewish-Christian dialogue, Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum.

Professor Goldman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was educated at Yeshiva University, Columbia and Harvard. He joined The New York Times as a copy boy in 1973 and soon became the news clerk for A.M. Rosenthal, the Times' legendary Executive Editor. Promoted to reporter in 1975, Goldman went on to cover a variety of beats, including state politics, education and transportation, before becoming a religion writer in 1983. He spent the 1985-86 academic year as a New York Times Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School, which was the basis for his first book.

Professor Goldman was a Visiting Fulbright Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1997-98; a Scholar-in-Residence at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in 2002-03m and a Skirball Fellow at England's Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in 2004. 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 lives in New York City with his wife, Shira Dicker, and their three children, Adam, Emma and Judah.