his interviews," and Gessen contacted an adoption lawyer asking "whether I had reason to worry that social services would go after my family and attempt to remove my oldest son, whom I adopted in 2000." The lawyer told Gessen "to instruct my son to run if he is approached by strangers and concluding: 'The answer to your question is at the airport.'" In June 2013, Gessen was beaten up outside of the Parliament; they said of the incident that "I realized that in all my interactions, including professional ones, I no longer felt I was perceived as a journalist first: I am now a person with a pink triangle." They stated that "a court would easily decide to annul Vova's adoption, and I wouldn't even know it." Given this potential threat to their family, Gessen "felt like no risk was small enough to be acceptable," they later told the CBC Radio. "So we just had to get out." In a January 2014 interview with ABC News, Gessen said that the Russian gay propaganda law had "led to a huge increase in antigay violence, including murders. It's led to attacks on gay and lesbian clubs and film festivals...and because these laws are passed supposedly to protect children, the people who are most targeted or have the most to fear are LGBT parents." Gessen wrote in February 2014 that Citibank had closed their bank account because of concern about Russian money-laundering operations. , Gessen serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. Previously at Amherst College, they were named the John J. McCloy '16 Professor of American Institutions and International Diplomacy for the 2017–18 and 2018–19 academic years. In October 2017, they published their 10th book The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. They were included in the 2022 Fast Company Queer 50 list. Personal life Gessen married Svetlana Generalova, a Russian citizen who was also involved in the LGBT movement in Moscow, in 2004. The wedding took place in the U.S. Generalova and Gessen later divorced, and by the time Gessen returned to the U.S. from Russia in December 2013, Gessen was married to Darya Oreshkina. Gessen has three children—two sons and a daughter. Their eldest son, Vova, was born in 1997 in Russia and was adopted by Gessen from an orphanage in Kaliningrad for the children of HIV-positive women. Their daughter, Yolka, was born to Gessen in the