Lerner

Writer-journalist Adam Lerner ’13, an English major with a minor in international relations, is among 18 new Luce scholars. The Luce Scholars Program – aimed at increasing awareness of Asia among future leaders in American society – provides stipends and placement in one-year internships in Asia, along with language training and guidance.

Lerner plans to write literary criticism or political commentary for a literary publication. Ideally his internship will be located in a large city with overlapping cultures in India, Japan, Korea or the Philippines, he said.

He hopes to write about the trend in Asia of millions of people moving into the middle class. “I am primarily interested in looking at the effect these people will have on culture, on the traditions, stories and perspectives they will communicate through art, and how this will shape their emerging political identity,” he said.

Lerner is a spring 2013 featured correspondent for USA Today College. At Cornell, he writes an arts column for The Cornell Daily Sun and serves on its editorial writing board. He is editor-in-chief at the Cornell Book Review, a formerly defunct magazine that he relaunched in 2010. He has worked as a teaching assistant at the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines and as a tutor at the institute’s Writing Walk-In Service.

A resident of Chevy Chase, Md., Lerner has studied in Spain and France. He plans a career, possibly in academia, that combines creative writing, journalism and promotion of the arts.

Lerner is the fourth Cornellian to be named a Luce scholar since 2007.

The Luce Scholars Program chooses scholars who demonstrate an outstanding capacity for leadership and have a record of high achievement and a clearly defined career interest with evidence of potential for professional accomplishment, according to the program.