Joseph Lelyveld (born April 5, 1937) was an American executive editor of the New York Times from 1994 to 2001, and interim executive editor in 2003 after the resignation of Howell Raines. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.
In all, Lelyveld worked at the Times for nearly 40 years, starting out in 1962. He graduated from Harvard College in 1958, received a master's degree from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1960, and subsequently a Fulbright Scholarship. At the Times, he went from copy editor to foreign correspondent within three years.
Among Lelyveld's books is Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, based on his reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa, in the 1960s and 1980s. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1986 for Move Your Shadow.Lelyveld's book "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India" was banned in the Indian state of Gujarat from publication for insinuating that the subject, Mahatma Gandhi, was in a homosexual relationship. This ban receiving a unanimous vote in favor of the state of Gujarat in April 2011 by Gujarat's state assembly.He was also foreign editor of the Times, and its managing editor.