Philip Terzian

Philip Henry Terzian (born 1950) is an American journalist and has been Literary Editor of The Weekly Standard, the well-known journal of politics and culture founded by William Kristol and Fred Barnes in 1995, since 2005. He is the author of Architects of Power: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and the American Century (Encounter Books 2010).

Life and career

Terzian is a native of Kensington, Maryland, the son of Louise (Anderson) Terzian, an attorney and probate court judge, and L. A. Terzian, a microbiologist. His maternal grandfather, Cecil Whitaker Anderson, was a purchasing executive for Acme Markets in Philadelphia. His paternal grandparents were Armenian immigrants. Terzian attended Montgomery County, Maryland public schools, the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, and was graduated from Villanova University with a degree in English in 1973. He did graduate work at Oxford University under H.C.G. Mathew, editor of the diaries of William Gladstone, and earned a diploma in theological studies at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia.

He worked as a reporter and editor at The Anniston Star in Alabama, Reuters and U.S. News & World Report. During 1974-78 he was assistant editor of The New Republic. He was associate editor of the Lexington Herald in Kentucky, assistant editor of the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times, and during 1986-92, was editor of the editorial pages at the Providence Journal.

In 1970 he was a speechwriter for Larry O'Brien, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He later wrote speeches (1978–79) for U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

For two decades before joining The Weekly Standard, Terzian wrote a column syndicated by the Scripps Howard News Service, and reported from dozens of foreign countries. He has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Distinguished Commentary, a Pulitzer Prize juror, and has been a media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has been a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion, Harper's, The American Spectator, the Times Literary Supplement, London Sunday Telegraph, Commentary, the Sewanee Review and other publications. A former member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he is a member of the American Council on Germany and the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.