Ari Melber is an American attorney, writer, and Emmy Award-winning journalist who is the chief legal correspondent for MSNBC and host of The Beat with Ari Melber. He was born on March 31, 1980, in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. to Barbara and Daniel Melber. His family belongs to European Jewish descent, and his grandparents were among the survivors of the Jewish Holocaust during the Second World War. Melber attended Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, and then went on to graduate with an AB degree in political science from the University of Michigan in 2002. He later attended Cornell Law School to earn a J.D. degree. Melber is Jewish, the son of an Israeli immigrant, and his grandparents were Holocaust survivors.