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Benjamin R. Barber

Distinguished scholar and political theorist

Benjamin R. Barber has combined a career as a distinguished scholar and political theorist with a life of practical commitment to democratic civic practices and the arts that has given him widespread experience as an educational and political consultant, television and theater writer, fundraiser, administrator and public speaker. As a scholar with a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, he has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, Princeton University, the City University of New York, Rutgers University and the University of Maryland; he has won Guggenheim, Fulbright and American Council of Learned Society fellowships, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from Grinnell College and received the Palmes Academiques (Chevalier) from the French Government and the Berlin Prize of the American Academy of Berlin.

Benjamin R. Barber, the international renowned political theorist, is a distinguished Senior Fellow at DEMOS, the network for ideas and action in New York City. President of CivWorld (at DEMOS), the international NGO that sponsors Interdependence Day and the Paradigm project, Barber was Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University for 32 years, and then Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society at The University of Maryland. Dr. Barber brings an abiding concern for democracy and citizenship to issues of politics, culture and education in America and abroad. He consults regularly with political and civic leaders in the United States and around the world, and was for 5 years an informal consultant to President Bill Clinton.

Benjamin Barber's 17 books include the classic Strong Democracy (1984) reissued in 2004 in a twentieth anniversary edition; the recent international best-seller Jihad vs. Mcworld (1995 with a Post 9/11 Edition in 2001, translated into twenty-seven languages) and Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole published in 2007 by W.W. Norton in the United States and in seven foreign editions. Columbia University Press will publish a new paperback edition of his The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House in 2008.

Barber is a regular commentator for National Public Radio's Marketplace and his blog can be found on The Huffington Post. He has written for Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Prospect, Le Nouvel Observateur, Die Zeit, La Repubblica, El Pais and many other scholarly and popular publications in America and abroad. He was a founding editor and for ten years editor-in-chief of the distinguished international quarterly Political Theory. He holds a certificate from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an M.A. and Doctorate from Harvard University.


Travels from USA

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