Frank Bruni
Frank Bruni is a prominent journalist and bestselling author who served as a staff writer at the New York Times for over 25 years. During that time, he worked as a White House correspondent, the Rome bureau chief, the paper’s chief restaurant critic, and op-ed columnist—a role he maintained for 10 years that brought him national renown. Still affiliated with the paper, he is now a contributing opinion writer and maintains a weekly newsletter offering reflections on the mess (and magic) of politics and life.
Bruni is the author of five New York Times bestsellers including, most recently, The Age of Grievance, a deep dive into why Americans are so angry and what we can do about it. He makes the case that we've conflated legitimate causes and petty complaints, creating a condition of constant self-victimization. We obsess over how we've been wronged and who to blame, rather than focusing on civil, productive dialogue and constructive action. This culture of grievance has become the enemy of progress in politics and society and thus poses a threat to American democracy.
The Beauty of Dusk is a memoir detailing Bruni's adjustment to the sudden loss of vision in one eye and the acceptance of the reality that the same fate could befall the other at any moment. The result is a poignant and uplifting education in vulnerability, resilience and optimism. It reached #5 on the nonfiction bestseller lists and earned rave reviews from people and publications including Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, People magazine, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
The first openly gay op-ed columnist at the Times, Bruni is a recipient of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s Randy Shilts Award for his career-long contributions to the LGBTQ community and the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Newspaper Columnist. Prior to joining the New York Times, Bruni worked at New York Post and Detroit Free Press, where he was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. He appears frequently as a television commentator on CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, MSBNC, and more.
Frank Bruni is the Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. His courses teach journalism and media with emphasis on ethics and morality.
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The Age of Grievance
America’s most recent presidential election – like so many political debates today – was a contest of grievances, suggesting that our country is less about diverse people finding common ground than mutually distrustful tribes jockeying for advantage. We need to understand how we got here to move beyond it, and Frank Bruni, a longtime New York Times journalist and acclaimed author (including the 2024 bestseller “The Age of Grievance”), explores the arc of grievance and the answers to it in thoughtful remarks designed to point us toward hopeful solutions and respectful conversations.
A Better College Culture
The corrosive discord in American political debate is mirrored on many college campuses, where protests can turn ugly and destructive, where many scared students censor themselves and where the freewheeling conversations essential to education are stymied. Why has that happened and how can we change it? In his 2024 bestseller “The Age of Grievance,” the longtime New York Times journalist and Duke University professor Frank Bruni explores those questions and suggests remedies, which he expands on in thoughtful remarks that reflect not only decades of reporting but also his more recent years and current role in the classroom.
Forging Optimism and Resilience in the Face of Personal Crisis
In late 2017, Frank suffered a stroke of his right optic nerve, lost most vision in that eye and learned there was a 20 percent chance that he’d go blind. The story of his adjustment became the New York Times bestseller The Beauty of Dusk, praised by everyone from Oprah Winfrey to medical ethicists. Frank shares his story in this speech and casts what happened to him in universal terms. We all encounter sudden hardship, face limits as we age and can fashion a perspective with constructive, happiness-making measures of confidence and gratitude. Additionally, Frank offers advice for patients on getting the most from health care providers and for health care providers on doing right by the vulnerable people in front of them.
The Myth of Elite Colleges
In his 2015 New York Times bestseller Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, Frank Bruni dove deep into the world of higher education, a subject he wrote about extensively as an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times. His new perspective as a professor at Duke University has both broadened and sharpened his thinking about the promise and pitfalls of college, which he invites audiences to reflect on in this heartfelt and important speech.
Frank Bruni: Snapshots of Decades in Journalism
Across 35 inimitable years in journalism, Frank Bruni has been a White House reporter, a foreign correspondent (Rome), the Times’s chief restaurant critic for five years and an Op-Ed columnist for over a decade. Frank has covered everything from campaigns to earthquakes to the Vatican. He has hunkered down in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with Army soldiers, stretched his legs on Air Force One with President George W. Bush and – thanks to all of that and more – has war stories galore. In this engagement, he tells those tales and on not just the glamour but also the necessity of journalism.
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