- Pritzker Fellows
- Current Fellows
- Nancy French
Nancy French
Conservative Author & Investigative Journalist
Biography
Nancy French is a six-time New York Times bestselling author whose collaborations span politics, pop culture, sports, faith, and human rights. She has worked with figures ranging from U.S. senators and governors to Olympic athletes, The Bachelor’s Sean Lowe, and advocates like Kim Kardashian. Her latest book, Ghosted (2024), was featured on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and named the 2025 Christian Memoir of the Year. As an investigative journalist, she led a three-year probe into abuse at Kanakuk that made the front page of USA TODAY, inspired an Emmy-winning VICE News project, and is now becoming a limited series. Her reporting has earned state and national awards and been cited by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and others. She is a frequent national speaker and a storyteller for The Moth.
Seminars
"Why You Don’t Have Friends: Our Shared Journey Through Contemporary Culture, Faith & Politics in America"
Nancy French is a best-selling ghostwriter and an expert on the intersection of politics and the Christian right. She has collaborated with figures ranging from Sarah Palin to former Senator Ben Sasse, Trump’s pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson to Chinese dissident Bob Fu. She's the author of Ghosted: An American Story, a memoir about how her political decisions led to exile from conservative circles. She's also an investigative reporter who led an in-depth investigation into sexual abuse at the largest Christian camp in America.
A conservative woman cast aside from her own cultural tribe when she refused to support Trump - but never embraced or in Fellowship with the liberals she once disdained - Nancy has done deep thinking - and living - in liminal spaces of acceptance, belonging and action.
In her seminars, you'll examine identity and conflict in contemporary American life and explore how Americans sort themselves. We'll discuss the forces that shape loneliness, the rise of distrust in our institutions and how misinformation, technology, religion and polarization influence how we see one another. Students will connect national trends to individual experience, considering how communities are formed, fractured and rebuilt.
Each week, we'll look at current research and journalism via stories and conversation. Together we'll examine how identity is constructed publicly and privately, how institutions shape belief and how people seek meaning in this seemingly chaotic moment in history. Also, we’ll consider how the stories we tell - about ourselves and about one another - shape our politics, our relationships and our sense of belonging.
Seminars are off the record and open to current UChicago students only.
My family members are hillbillies and therefore all “ideologically uniform.” When I went to a small Christian college in Tennessee, it was “ideologically uniform.” So, when I garnered my courage and set out on a journey north to New York City, I hoped to find diversity and acceptance. Instead, I merely got ostracized because I didn’t buy into all the tenets of feminism. So, why are communities becoming more politically and culturally uniform? Do neighborhood choices shape our beliefs, and what does this clustering mean for democracy, elections and social trust?
When I was a conservative ghost writer writing for conservative pundits, politicians and leaders, I was able to surreptitiously shape the national conversation - even provoking the President to act - while wearing pajamas in my rural Tennessee home. I’ll describe what I did when I discovered my clients were lying to me, when my clients plagiarized and when my clients wanted to hide the truth. Also, I’ll talk about what happened when the definition of “conservative” changed beneath my feet. I found myself on Donald Trump’s plane wanting nothing more than to get off. So that’s what I did.
I reveal the underbelly of political ghostwriting – what it is, why it’s good and why it can sometimes be bad.
Suggested Readings:
- South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem erroneously describes meeting with Kim Jong Un in new book | Stephen Groves, Associated Press via PBS
- Ghost in the Machine: A Washington ghostwriter Gets caught in the Clinton scandal complex | Laura Miller, Slate
- Pretend I'm Not Here: How I Worked with Three Newspaper Icons, One Powerful First Lady, and Still Managed to Dig Myself Out of the Washington Swamp | Barbara Feinman Todd
- The Presidency: Speaking Out of Turn | Hugh Sidley, Time Magazine (about President Reagan’s communication director making up quotes without Reagan’s knowledge)
When I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh, I was convinced that the Democrats had a “woman problem.” The fact that Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton were Democratic patriarchs convinced me that liberals did not take the concerns of women seriously. When I ghosted a book for conservative who talked about her own rape, I clearly saw how “believe all women” did not extend to conservatives. But then, Trump blew my partisan-superiority totally up.
Suggested Readings:
- March 22, 1998: Why Feminists Support Clinton | Gloria Steinem via The New York Times
- Resolution on the Importance of Moral Character in Public Officials | Southern Baptist Convention
- Bristol Palin: Levi Raped Me | Dan Savage via The Stranger
- Is Bristol Palin’s new memoir the story of a rape survivor speaking out? | Jessica Valenti via The Washington Post
- The Limits of ‘Believe All Women’ | Bari Weiss via The New York Times
- Washington Was About to Explode: the Clinton Scandal, 20 Years Later | John Harris via POLITICO Magazine
- Kamala Harris and Bill Clinton touting girls' empowerment together is a bad joke | Celia Viggo Wexler via NBC News
Writing for “the right” gave me a political and social cache in rural Tennessee amongst my fellow Republicans. My husband received the Ronald Reagan award at CPAC in 2012, where our family was said to represent the “best” of the conservative movement. That was the last time we’d be welcomed at CPAC, and my own personal relationships melted away once I decided not to support Donald Trump. Let’s explore the growing loneliness epidemic in America and the decline of everyday community life - and how this collapse has elevated our tribal loyalties above our collective identities as Americans. How has social capital - our networks of trust, shared activities and civic participation eroded over the last half-century? How can we as mere citizens rebuild social connection?
America is experiencing a rapid decline of religious participation in the United States and the growing number of Americans who identify with no religious tradition at all. When we lived in Tennessee, politics became so all-encompassing that we’d get confronted at the communion table over our political stances. After a white nationalist confronted me, with my Ethiopian American daughter standing behind me, I said I would never walk back into that church again.
How have politics, culture, generational change, mobility, COVID, abuse and digital life reshaped American faith practices? Is the decline of organized religion a loss, a transformation or both?
Negative partisanship - when Americans are motivated more by fear and hatred of the opposing party than by support for their own - is skyrocketing. In this seminar, we'll examine how dislike fuels political identity, voter behavior, media consumption and party loyalty. As a former political consultant, I talk about how the sausage is made, revealing the hours of thought I used to put into email subject lines that would get the most clicks. I’ll talk about how I was an expert in “nutpicking” until I felt God stopped me from breaking the Ten Commandments as a part of my occupational requirements - and how once I decided not to lie, I got fired from my jobs. Why do Americans feel more emotionally invested in defeating the other side than advancing their own ideas? Do parties benefit from anger? Who's harmed by it? Can a democracy function if voters are united only by mutual contempt?
In this seminar, students will observe a live, structured conversation between Nancy and a guest with whom she holds profound disagreements. The session models civil discourse in practice - demonstrating how intellectual humility, active listening and moral clarity can coexist with sharp disagreement. Students will analyze rhetorical choices, emotional dynamics and norms of respect in high-stakes conversation.
When I left Tennessee and moved to Philadelphia, I was suddenly surrounded by a different type of person in my moms' groups. After getting established in my relationships, I came out as conservative and suddenly every conversation centered around politics and Jesus. They claimed they never had true relationships with “people who loved Pat Robertson,” and I found myself always correcting the narrative about “my tribe.” However, true relationships can create understanding and empathy. Come for the story of me being stuck in the car with the gun-carrying Nazi for 3 hours, stay for the Perception Gap Quiz to examine how your own assumptions stack up against reality. You might be in for a surprise! What groups get misunderstood the most - and why? How do misperceptions influence policy debates, identity politics, and polarization?