Walter Isaacson, the New Orleans native and former reporter who became chairman and CEO of CNN, managing editor of TIME, a best-selling author and leader of the Aspen Institute, will join Tulane University’s history department with the title University Professor in early 2018.
"I'm thrilled to be coming to Tulane, where my parents, grandparents and many other family members went. It is one of the world's great universities with its own unique character,” Isaacson said.
The 64-year-old Isaacson will teach his first course, the History of the Digital Revolution: From Ada Lovelace to Mark Zuckerberg, in the spring semester of 2018. The best-selling biographer of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger will also teach a seminar on the writing of history.
After serving 14 years as CEO and President of the Aspen Institute, he'll step down from the post at the end of the year.
Isaacson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the boards of United Airlines, Tulane University, the New Orleans City Planning Commission, the New Orleans Tricentennial Commission, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Society of American Historians, the Carnegie Institution for Science and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance.