KQED Radio Staff

Michael Krasny

Host, Forum

Michael Krasny, Ph.D., is host of KQED's award-winning Forum, a news and public affairs program that concentrates on the arts, culture, health, business and technology.

Before coming to KQED Public Radio in 1993, Dr. Krasny hosted a night-time talk program for KGO Radio and co-anchored the weekly KGO television show Nightfocus. He hosted Bay TV's Take Issue, a nightly news analysis show, programs for KQED Public Televison, KRON television, and National Public Radio, and did news commentary for KTVU television.

Since 1970 he has been a professor of English at San Francisco State University and is a widely published scholar and critic as well as a former regular contributor to Mother Jones magazine and a fiction writer. He has also worked widely as a facilitator and host in the corporate sector and as moderator for a host of major non-profit events.

Dr. Krasny has interviewed many of the leading newsmakers and cultural icons of our time, including Saul Bellow, former President Jimmy Carter, Cesar Chavez, Noam Chomsky, Francis Crick, John Kenneth Galbraith, Newt Gingrich, Jane Goodall, V.S. Naipaul, Rosa Parks, Robert Redford, Salman Rushdie, Carl Sagan, Susan Sontag, Gloria Steinem, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, including The SY Agnon Gold Medal for Intellectual Distinction, The Eugene Block Award for Human Rights Journalism, The Inclusiveness in Media Award from The National Conference for Community and Justice, and a Koret Foundation Fellowship. He has also been named best talk show host by Focus magazine, a number of Bay Area newspapers, The San Francisco Publicity Club, and Citysearch.

Dr. Krasny received his B.A. (Cum Laude) and M.A. degrees from Ohio University, where he is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and his Ph.D. degree from The University of Wisconsin.

Photo by Greg Habiby.