Batya Ungar-Sargon

Batya Ungar-Sargon is an American journalist and author. Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and the former opinion editor of The Forward. She is the author of two books, the most recent of which is Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women, which discusses the challenges faced by the American working class and the gap between them and the elite class.

Education
Ungar-Sargon holds a 2004 bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago (AB) in English and completed her PhD in 2013 at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, entitled Coercive Pleasures: The Force and Form of the Novel 1719-1740, addresses, among other elements, how rape and colonialism figure in the pleasures of modern English fiction.

Career
Ungar-Sargon began her career as a journalist and news analyst. She reported on the rights of undocumented immigrants as well as liberal voices on Israel and the American Jewish community. In 2019 Ungar-Sargon articulated the importance of maintaining an American Jewish identity apart from Israeli politics, but rather one which embraces the values of civil and minority rights. She was also a managing editor at the wine and spirits media outlet VinePair.

In 2017 Ungar-Sargon became the opinion editor at The Forward. In this role she was criticized by some on the left for allegations of weaponizing claims of antisemitism and right-wing, pro-Israel bias, and publishing "deeply harmful perspectives."

She has written for The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, The New York Review of Books, and The Free Press.

In 2020, Ungar-Sargon was selected for the 2021 ADL and Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellowship.