Steven L. Isenberg

New York, NY

Steve Isenberg is the Executive Director of PEN American Center. PEN is the world's oldest human rights organization, dedicated to free expression and the propagation of literature. Prior to that for several years, he was visiting professor of humanities at the University of Texas at Austin teaching 19th and 20th century literature in the liberal arts honors program. While at UT he also taught a course on Watergate: The Press and The Presidency, in which his students made great use of the Harry Ransom Center. He has had careers in city government, law, newspapers, and academia. Isenberg has served as Chief of Hall to Mayor John V. Lindsay, practiced as a litigator in the firm of Breed, Abbott & Morgan, and was a publisher and senior newspaper executive at the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and New York Newsday, the Stanford Advocate, and Greenwich Time.

Former President of the Executive Advisory Board of the College of Letters and Science at Berkeley, Isenberg has also taught courses at Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, Davidson College as Batten Professor of Public Policy, and the New School.

He received three degrees in English literature, a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and a B.A. and M.A. from Worcester College, Oxford, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. He also holds an honorary doctorate from Adelphi University where he was interim President and Chairman of the Board.

His wife, Barbara, is the founder and president of the North American Bear Co., and their son, Christopher heads up No Mas and Office of Air, sports apparel, marketing, and journalism enterprises.