Receive Updates from Jeff Jacoby
Jeff Jacoby became an op-ed columnist for The Boston Globe in February 1994. Seeking a conservative voice to balance its famously liberal roster of commentators, the Globe hired him away from the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987.
A Cleveland native, Jacoby graduated with honors from George Washington University in 1979 and from Boston University Law School in 1983. He practiced law for a short time at the firm of Baker & Hostetler, but returned to Boston to become deputy manager of Ray Shamie's 1984 campaign for the U.S. Senate. From 1985 to 1987, Jacoby was an assistant to Dr. John Silber, who at the time was president of Boston University.
In addition to his print work, Jacoby has been a political commentator for WBUR-FM, Boston's National Public Radio affiliate. For several years he hosted "Talk of New England," a weekly television program, and has often appeared as a panelist on WCVB-TV's "Five on Five." He is an overseer of the Huntington Theatre Company, the largest resident theatre in Boston, and is on the board of The Concord Review, a quarterly journal of essays on history by secondary students worldwide.
By
Jeff Jacoby (May 20, 2012)
NEWS FLASH: The next president of the United States, like the last 29, will be a Republican or a Democrat.
That's not news, you say? But surely it must be. Haven't we... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (May 16, 2012)
PRICES WERE OUT OF CONTROL at the end of 3rd-century Rome, and the Emperor Diocletian was determined to rein them in. In AD 301 he issued his famous Edict on Prices, a... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (May 14, 2012)
IN DECEMBER 1862, from his military headquarters in Mississippi, Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued a directive expelling "Jews as a class" from the immense war zone known... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (May 09, 2012)
SHIN DONG-HYUK grew up in North Korea's Camp 14, one of the monstrous slave-labor prison complexes in which the world's most tyrannical regime has crushed hundreds of... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (May 06, 2012)
There is nothing new under the sun, including politicians who seek to win votes by milking the gap between rich and poor.
Today it's Barack Obama, demanding a "Buffett... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (May 03, 2012)
THERE IS A PASSAGE in Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's acclaimed series of historical sea novels, in which Stephen Maturin casually refers to the wealth... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Apr 29, 2012)
If insanity is doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different outcome, then the federal government's strategy for keeping higher education affordable... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Apr 25, 2012)
US REPRESENTATIVE JIM MCGOVERN, a Worcester Democrat, generated some unwanted controversy two years ago when he publicly declared: "The Constitution is wrong."
The context... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Apr 22, 2012)
"I SAW MANY SIGNS in this campaign," said Richard Nixon the day after he was elected president in 1968. "But the one that touched me the most was one that I... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Apr 18, 2012)
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY always falls during the week that follows Passover. At first glance, the two would seem to have little in common -- one memorializes the millions of... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Apr 11, 2012)
Now that the 2012 Masters Tournament is over, the hounds of political correctness have stopped baying at Augusta National Golf Club over its membership policies. The... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Apr 04, 2012)
Each year in the United States, an estimated 6.1 billion hours are spent complying with the federal tax code. I'm pretty sure at least half of those hours are spent by... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Mar 28, 2012)
Second of two parts (Read Part 1)
"The oldest president in US history and the youngest members of the nation's electorate have forged one of the strongest bonds in... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Mar 26, 2012)
"I don't mean to be flip with this," said Mitt Romney during a Q-and-A with students at the University of Chicago last week. "But I don't... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Mar 21, 2012)
THE COLORADO SUPREME COURT put some noses out of joint when it ruled unanimously this month that the University of Colorado's campus gun ban violated a 2003 state law that... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Mar 18, 2012)
They say all things must end, but the wrangling over Mitt Romney's support for an individual health-insurance mandate persists without letup.
It has been nearly... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Mar 14, 2012)
IN A NEW JERSEY COURTROOM on Monday, the defense rested in the trial of Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers freshman accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate's intimate... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Mar 11, 2012)
HAVE YOU ever met a sharecropper? If you’ve been in a taxi in Boston — or any major US city — the answer is almost surely yes.
Like tenant farmers in the post-Civil War... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Mar 07, 2012)
Many Americans disdain Rush Limbaugh, some of them high-placed and influential. The author of Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot is now a US senator from Minnesota. The... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Mar 05, 2012)
Commentators, not all of them Democrats, have been having a field day since GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum charged Barack Obama with snobbery for pushing the idea... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Feb 29, 2012)
IN A COLUMN many years ago, I described how I once attempted to chart a family tree. Most of my father's family had been killed in Auschwitz and my efforts to trace their... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Feb 15, 2012)
Much was made of the president's supposed compromise on requiring religious institutions to pay for their employees' contraceptives and sterilization drugs. "The new policy,"... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Feb 13, 2012)
Did the New York City Police Department use "terrible judgment," as Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, when it showed a documentary about Islamist extremists -- The Third Jihad --... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Feb 08, 2012)
During a visit to Cairo last week, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked whether she would advise Egyptians drafting a constitution for the post-Mubarak era... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Feb 06, 2012)
"46 STATES TO GO."
That was the sign on Newt Gingrich's podium in an Orlando ballroom last Tuesday, when the former House speaker faced supporters after losing the Florida... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Feb 01, 2012)
SOON -- PERHAPS AS EARLY AS TODAY -- Gov. Mitch Daniels will sign legislation making Indiana the nation's 23rd right-to-work state. Labor unions angrily oppose the change,... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 29, 2012)
WITH MY DRIVER'S LICENSE expiring in February, I made a trip to the Registry of Motor Vehicles last week to renew it. To my astonishment, I was in and out of the RMV branch... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 25, 2012)
FOR SHEER ANTIDEMOCRATIC GALL, it is hard to top the so-called "People's Pledge" signed on Monday by US Senator Scott Brown and Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren. The... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 23, 2012)
Cable TV service can be purchased in Boston for as little as 55 cents a day, a burden the city's top politician regards as so unjust that he is demanding the legal... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 18, 2012)
Near The Kirti Monastary in a Tibetan area of China's Sichuan province, 21-year-old Lobsang Jamyang publicly set himself on fire last Saturday. It was the fourth time this... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 16, 2012)
Any time is the right time to read Martin Luther King's 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail." But it pulses with special relevance during Black History Month.
We have fallen... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 11, 2012)
For anyone gauging the Republican presidential contest, this week's most significant poll results weren't the ones tabulated in New Hampshire last night. They were the ones... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 09, 2012)
Mitt Romney has been thought for months to have the New Hampshire primary in the bag. But one vote he didn't have locked up until Wednesday was that of Steve Rowe, a... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 04, 2012)
A YEAR AGO THIS WEEK, just two days before being shot by a deranged assailant in her district, Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords introduced legislation to cut... more
By
Jeff Jacoby (Jan 02, 2012)
Newt Gingrich's presidential ambitions may be heading for the exits -- opinion polls suggest that the former House speaker's hour has come and gone -- but his critique of... more