Michael Balter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Balter is an American science journalist. His writings primarily cover anthropology, archaeology, mental health and sexual harassment in science.[1][2]
Balter was a correspondent for Science magazine for over 25 years,[3] before being controversially dismissed in 2016.[4][5] He has also written for Scientific American,[6] Audubon,[7] The Verge,[2] LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles magazine,[8] and taught journalism at New York University, Boston University and City College of New York.[9]
Born on the Alaskan Aleutian Islands, Balter grew up in Los Angeles and studied at the University of California, Los Angeles and San Jose State University.[8] He obtained his master's degree in biology from UCLA in 1977.[8] As a student, Balter was involved in far-left politics and especially the movement opposing the Vietnam War.[8][10] He was conscripted into the US Army and stationed at Fort Ord, where he and other members of the radical Progressive Labor Party, which aimed to "subvert and destroy [the military] from within", attempted to organize resistance to the war amongst soldiers.[10] He was court-martialed twice, once for distributing anti-war literature,[10] and once for disrupting a training exercise.[10][11]
Balter began his journalism career writing for newspapers based in Los Angeles, including LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles magazine.[8] In the 1990s he relocated to Paris, where he was a foreign correspondent for several American newspapers and magazines, and began writing for Science magazine.[8]
