UM Journalism School Welcomes Fall Pollner Professor

MISSOULA – The University of Montana School of Journalism has named reporter and former attorney E. Tammy Kim the Distinguished T. Anthony Pollner Professor for fall 2020.

Kim will be in residence at the School of Journalism this fall, teaching about the history and institutions of the American worker. Her course will focus on an overview of key labor issues while guiding student journalists to develop research, interviewing, writing and fact-checking skills.

E. Tammy Kim
E. Tammy Kim

Kim currently is a freelance magazine reporter and contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. She previously worked at The New Yorker and Al Jazeera America and has written for The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Review of Books and Columbia Journalism Review, among other publications. She also is the co-author and co-editor of “Punk Ethnography,” a 2016 book about the politics of world music.

Kim earned her Juris Doctor at the School of Law at New York University and completed her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Yale. She has earned prestigious awards for both her journalism and work in the legal profession and has taught courses in labor, immigration and human rights at Yale, the Cooper Union and the City University of New York.

Kim is a second-generation Korean American and grew up in Tacoma, Washington. In addition to teaching a seminar, she will advise the Kaimin, the student newspaper at UM.

“The course I’m planning for the fall, ‘The American Worker,’ will introduce students to the basics of labor history and train them in reporting sensitively on the working class,” Kim said. “I’m thrilled to have this opportunity, and appreciate the kind welcome of the University community.”  

The Pollner professorship was created in 2001 by the family and friends of T. Anthony Pollner, a 1999 School of Journalism alumnus who died in a motorcycle accident. Dozens of renowned journalists have served as distinguished professors at the school since the program’s inception.

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Contact: Denise Dowling, director, UM School of Journalism, 406-243-5250, denise.dowling@mso.umt.edu.