Richard Stengel

Stengel is the former Editor of TIME, an MSNBC analyst and the author of Mandela's Way, a book about his work with the South African president, and Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation.

Recent Articles

Putin May Just Be Winning the Information War Outside of the U.S. and Europe

Is Vladimir Putin losing the information war with Ukraine? Well, it depends on who you ask. It’s never easy to measure such things, but here are a few numbers. While 141 countries in the UN...

By Richard Stengel May 20, 2022

Ukrainian Refugees Try to Find Their Way in Poland

They walk off the bus slowly, tentatively. Young women holding the hands of small children. Grandmothers right behind carrying over-stuffed suitcases—or dragging garbage bags of clothes. All the mothers wear sneakers. There are a handful...

By Richard Stengel April 18, 2022

Column: Desmond Tutu, a Beacon of Moral Justice

On the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February of 1990, he walked out of the gates of Victor Verster prison in Cape Town and was surprised by the crowds of people. After...

By Richard Stengel December 26, 2021

How Nelson Mandela Came to Work with F.W. de Klerk to End Apartheid

In 1991, two years after he became president of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk, who died at the age of 85, secretly met with Nelson Mandela at Tuynhus, the South African president’s residence in Cape...

By Richard Stengel November 12, 2021

Data Drives the World. You Need to Understand It

'Millions of us have traded security and privacy for convenience. That’s a dangerous bargain,' Richard Stengel writes

By Richard Stengel October 20, 2021

The Bountiful Life of Vartan Gregorian

Vartan Gregorian was born in the ancient city of Tabriz in northern Iran. In his lovely autobiography, The Road to Home, Vartan notes that some archeologists believe that the historical location of the Garden of...

By Richard Stengel April 18, 2021

Armed Right-Wing Groups Aren’t ‘Militias’—We Need to Stop Calling Them That

Over the last month, ever since the indictment of 13 men for plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan, the word “militia” has appeared in thousands of newspaper headlines and TV news reports. The Detroit...

By Richard Stengel October 30, 2020

What We Can Learn From Nelson Mandela Today

When Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president in South African history in 1994, the world looked like a very different place. His election was a symbol of a new birth of freedom around...

By Richard Stengel July 17, 2020

Domestic Disinformation Is a Growing Menace

We’ve become so familiar with the idea that during the 2016 election thousands of Russian trolls—with very poor grammar—pretended to be Republican voters in Tennessee, Black activists in Michigan, and Trump supporters in Palm Beach...

By Richard Stengel June 26, 2020

The Pandemic Can Lead Us to a Smarter Future

In the days and weeks after 9/11, walking around midtown Manhattan felt like a small act of resilience. You didn’t know if more attacks were coming. Every car and truck was a possible bomb. You...

By Richard Stengel April 13, 2020
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