At the time of this interview, Hal Boyd was Editor of the Deseret News. He was appointed as the president’s chief of staff at Brigham Young University on May 6, 2024. The chief of staff is tasked with working collaboratively to help advance strategic initiatives on behalf of the Office of the President, including the seven initiatives outlined in President C. Shane Reese’s inaugural “Becoming BYU” address.
Boyd served as an associate professor and director of public scholarship in the School of Family Life at BYU and as the editor of the Deseret News and executive editor of Deseret Magazine. Boyd previously worked as special assistant to the president at Eastern Kentucky University.
Since 2018, Boyd has been a fellow of BYU’s Wheatley Institute, and his writings on family, religion, higher education, and constitutional government have appeared in various scholarly and journalistic venues, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, CNN, NBC News, First Things and The National Review. Boyd is the co-author of “Psalms of Nauvoo,” (Religious Studies Center, 2015) “Are Christians Mormon?” (Routledge, 2017) and “College for the Commonwealth: A Case for Higher Education in American Democracy” (University Press of Kentucky, 2018).
Boyd is a graduate of Yale Law School and earned a bachelor’s degree from BYU in philosophy.
