Notes From the Brink: A Collection Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad
Jeff Robbins
An America not merely fractured but altogether splintered by extremism, hyperpartisanship, unprecedented vitriol and widespread disdain for democracy. A world order threatened by autocracies, and a Europe threatened by a tyrant demonstrably ready to conquer territory by force. A Mideast taken hostage by genocidal terrorist enterprises funded by Iran, long adjudged the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror.
And that’s just for starters.
For Americans struggling to keep up with a 24/7 cycle of news—or what purports to be news—it feels as though we are on the brink. And it feels that way because we are.
Notes From the Brink is a collection of columns written from 2019 through early 2024 by syndicated columnist Jeff Robbins, a nationally recognized First Amendment attorney and a former United States Delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The columns are by turns forceful, exasperated, outraged, incredulous, ironic and passionate. They have in common an appeal to good sense and basic decency in the belief that sense and decency are at least a starting point for pulling us all back from the brink.
Jeff Robbins
Jeff Robbins, a nationally recognized First Amendment lawyer and civil litigator, served as chief counsel for the Democratic senators on the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and as deputy chief counsel for the Democratic senators on the United States Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. In 1999 and 2000, he served as a United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland.
Between 1987 and 1990, he was an assistant United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, where he focused on civil fraud cases and money laundering investigations. There he was tapped to be the district’s first chief of the Asset Forfeiture Unit. He was also twice appointed as a special assistant attorney general in Massachusetts, representing the secretary of the commonwealth.
He has written widely on politics, foreign policy and national security matters for the Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, The Times of Israel and the New York Observer. He is a visiting professor of the practice of political science at Brown University, where he teaches courses on congressional investigations and political journalism. He has received awards for public service from the United States Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the General Services Administration. From 2012 to 2014, he was chairman of the Anti-Defamation League’s New England board of directors, and from 2001 through 2004, he was president of the World Affairs Council of Boston. He is a frequent contributor to ABC News Live.
He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Joanne. They have two children, two dogs, one cat and a staggering monthly pet food bill.
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