
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Barton Gellman, left, the 2022 James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professor of Journalism, speaks during a Q & A session hosted by SUNY New Paltz President Donald Christian, right. Gellman will deliver a lecture called “Secrets, Leaks and the National Security State,” on the New Paltz campus.
On April 26 at 7 p.m., Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best-selling author and visiting professor Barton Gellman will deliver a lecture titled “Secrets, Leaks and the National Security State” on the SUNY New Paltz campus.
Gellman, a staff writer at The Atlantic, is the SUNY New Paltz 2022 Visiting Ottaway Professor and is teaching a course this spring semester called “The Literature of Fact,” which focuses on how to write narrative style magazine articles. He has also taught classes and hosted a lecture series at Princeton University.

Gellman spent more than two decades at the Washington Post and gained recognition for his reporting on national security and the War on Terror. He anchored the team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the National Security Agency and Edward Snowden. Gellman was previously awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series on Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2002, he was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath.
Gellman has also authored multiple books including “Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State” and the best-selling “Angler: The Cheney Vice-Presidency.”
More recently, Gellman has emerged as one of the nation’s leading voices covering the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol and related threats to the nation’s political order.
Gellman’s other professional honors include two George Polk Awards, two Overseas Press Club awards, two Emmy awards for a PBS Frontline documentary, Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
The talk will be hosted live on SUNY New Paltz’s campus, in Lecture Center Room 100, and will also be streamed live. The event is free and open to the public. A Q & A and book signing will follow the lecture. Anyone interested in viewing the live stream can join through the WebEx link below:
https://newpaltz.webex.com/newpaltz/j.php?MTID=mfe03ac95eac9d1f030a07b24e6b714a1.
The James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professorship is named for the founder of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., who was a leader of the American Press Institute and a lifelong supporter of high quality journalism in the Hudson Valley and across the globe. The Ottaway Visiting Professorship at SUNY New Paltz was established in 2000 through the generosity of James H. Ottaway Jr. ’18 (HON) and Mary Ottaway ’70, (elementary education).
Previous Ottaway visiting professors included Pulitzer Prize winners, foreign correspondents, book authors, editors, investigative reporters and experts in finance, science and consumer journalism.