Berkley Center

Tom Gjelten is a veteran journalist who was most recently religion and belief correspondent at National Public Radio (NPR), reporting on the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and social and cultural conflict arising from religious differences. During spring 2025 he is the Sakka Family Religion and International Journalism Fellow at Georgetown University. Gjelten’s nearly four-decade NPR career included overseas reporting in Central and South America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He later covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs from the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon. He is the author of, among others, Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (1996), Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (2008), and A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story (2015). He is the recipient of two Overseas Press Club Awards, a George Polk Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and a National Headliner Award. Gjelten is currently a contributing writer at Moment Magazine, where in 2022 he earned the “Religion Story of the Year” award from the Religion News Association. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.