Jonathan Knee, JD

Michael T. Fries Professor of Professional Practice of Media and Technology Columbia Business School

Columbia University

Jonathan Knee is a Michael T. Fries Professor of Professional Practice in Media and Technology and Co-Director of the Media and Technology Program at Columbia Business School where he teaches Digital Investing and Media and Technology Mergers and Acquisitions. He also co-teaches Sports Economics and Policy with Sunil Gulati of the Columbia Economics Department, The Media Industries: Public Policy and Business Strategy with Professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School and a Business Journalism seminar at the Columbia Journalism School with Professor James B. Stewart.  Professor Knee has also served as a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School. 

Professor Knee has been an investment banker for over 30 years and still serves as a Senior Advisor at Evercore. Before joining Evercore as a Senior Managing Director in 2003, he was a Managing Director and Co-head of Morgan Stanley’s Media Group and was previously Publishing Sector Head in the Communications, Media and Entertainment Group at Goldman Sachs.  His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Atlantic. He served as the Book Entry columnist for the New York Times DealBook from 2014 to 2021. Professor Knee is the author of Class Clowns: How the Smartest Investors Lost Billions in Education (Columbia: 2016) and The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade that Transformed Wall Street (Oxford: 2006) and co-author of The Curse of The Mogul: What’s Wrong With the World’s Leading Media Companies? (Portfolio: 2009). His most recent book is The Platform Delusion: Who Wins and Who Loses In the Age of Tech Titans (Portfolio: 2021).  Professor Knee serves on the boards of New Alternatives for Children, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York and is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Professor Knee holds a J.D., from Yale Law School, 1988; an M.B.A., from Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1987; an MSc in Economics from Trinity College Dublin, 1984; and a B.A., from Boston University, 1981.