{"id":5,"date":"2008-02-06T17:24:28","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T22:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/74.54.168.234\/~jimsleep\/?page_id=5"},"modified":"2025-05-21T09:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T14:24:07","slug":"about-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/?page_id=5","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Seyla Benhabib and Jim Sleeper, 2007               <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim Sleeper, a writer and teacher on American civic culture and politics,<\/strong> was a lecturer in political science at Yale from 1999-2020. His reportage and commentary have appeared in most major American newspapers and magazines. In the 1990s he appeared occasionally on The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, the Charlie Rose show, and National Public Radio\u2019s \u201cTalk of the Nation\u201d and was a commentator on NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered.\u201d Sleeper writes frequently about American civic culture, ethno-racial politics and identity, early America history, electoral politics, foreign policy, higher education, and freedom of speech. (See “Recent Work”<\/a><\/strong> on this site.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a political columnist for the New York Daily News <\/em>for three years during and after Rudolph Giuliani\u2019s successful 1993 mayoral campaign against the city\u2019s first African-American mayor, David Dinkins. Sleeper anticipated and interpreted Giuliani\u2019s victory in a series of columns on the city\u2019s changing political culture. In 2007, as Giuliani was preparing his presidential campaign, Sleeper posted, in The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em> and other venues, a column explaining Why Giuliani Shouldn’t Be President. <\/strong><\/a> An updated version was published by Foreign Policy<\/a> <\/strong><\/em>in 2016, when Giuliani was mentioned as a possible Secretary of State or Attorney General for Donald Trump. See also, “I Once Backed Rudy Giuliani, and I Know What’s Happened to Him,”<\/strong> <\/a>The New Republic<\/em>, June 16, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sleeper’s columns on the failures of American \u201cgrand strategic\u201d thinking<\/a> <\/strong>abroad in Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine and other venues have prompted intense debate. He has been a critic of neo-conservative foreign-policymakers and commentators. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has written many columns on Donald Trump\u2019s 2016 presidential campaign and first years in the White House, including a prescient essay in Salon, <\/em>during Trump’s rise through the 2016 Republican primaries, on how both parties had betrayed America.<\/strong><\/a> (Here’s an NPR interview<\/a><\/strong> on that essay.) He has also written about Trump for The Washington Monthly,<\/em> and Moyers & Co.<\/em><\/a><\/strong> His essays for The New York Times,<\/em> the Carnegie Council’s Journal of Ethics & International Affairs,<\/em> and other venues, assessing Yale\u2019s joint venture with Singapore<\/a> <\/strong>to establish a liberal arts college there, were extensive and widely read. He has written extensively about real and fabricated crises in liberal education, for The New York Times, Salon, and other venues.<\/em> He writes frequently about controversies over freedom of speech, sometimes challenging ACLU positions, as in this essay on free speech’s two slippery slopes<\/a><\/strong> in Salon<\/em>, and for The Baffler<\/em><\/a> <\/strong>and The Los Angeles Review of Books.<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His \u201cObama Chronicles,\u201d a series of columns, covered the 2008 presidential campaign. You can listen to him in a 20-minute NPR interview<\/strong><\/a> on the 20th anniversary of the publication of his The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sleeper was a member of the editorial board of the quarterly Dissent <\/em>from 1982 to 2021. He wrote for it frequently<\/a><\/strong> and edited a special edition of the magazine, In Search of New York <\/em>(1987), re-published by Transaction Books, with essays by the quarterly\u2019s founding editor, Irving Howe, as well as by Ada Louise Huxtable, Michael Harrington, Alfred Kazin, Jim Chapin, Paul Berman, and many other contributors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Longmeadow, Massachusetts native and Yale College graduate (1969), Sleeper has written about Puritanism’s influence on American civic and political culture for DEMOCRACY<\/a> <\/em><\/strong>journal, The Atlantic,<\/strong><\/em><\/a> and the Los Angeles Review of Books.<\/em>  <\/strong><\/a>He holds a doctorate in education from Harvard (1977). In the 1970s and \u201980s, he taught urban studies and writing at Harvard and Queens Colleges and at New York University. In 1982-83 he was a Charles Revson Fellow at Columbia University, studying urban housing development. In 1998 he was a fellow at the Harvard\u2019s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 1977 through 1980 Sleeper immersed himself in inner-city Brooklyn, New York as a reporter and publisher of a community weekly and a writer for The Village Voice.<\/em> Those experiences figured strongly in his writing The Closest of Strangers<\/em> and in his essay, \u201cOrwell\u2019s \u2018Smelly Little Orthodoxies\u2019 \u2014 and Ours\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a lecturer in political science at Yale from 1999 to 2020, Sleeper taught seminars on new conceptions of American national identity and on journalism, liberalism, and democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two decades ago, Luke Ford conducted this long, rambling, but still instructive interview with Sleeper<\/strong><\/a> about some of the twists and turns in his pilgrimage as an American, civic-republican writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s a shorter, more ‘familial\/historical’ profile:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born June 6, 1947– three years to the day after D-Day. On that day in 1944 my Dad, with the 277th Batallion US Army Combat Engineers, was billeted in England; his battalion went over about two months later and clanked across France, the Netherlands, and Germany, always about 20 miles behind the front lines, repairing or replacing bridges and railroad tracks that the retreating Wehrmacht had blown up.  Dad was also assigned to supervise some German prisoners, because he spoke Yiddish, which is about 75% German; and, because he had two years of college then, he also served the battalion’s C.O. as an interpreter with the locals — town mayors, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night when news of FDR’s death reached the 277th, around midnight or early morning, my Dad, 26 yrs old, was posted at the CO’s HQ in Holsterhausen Germany, up by the Baltic, just east of the Denmark peninsula. He decided that he should wake the commander, A.O. Swickard, to tell him that the commander in chief had died:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 “Sir, President Roosevelt is dead.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To which Swickard replied, groggily: “I don’t give a flying fuck who the president is,” and rolled over and went back to sleep. The army was a grinding, clanking machine, far from Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the war, Dad graduated Clark with a B.A. major in Romance Languages, but, like other children of the Great Depression, he went into business to provide for a family. He bought a load of Army surplus first-aid kits and a small truck, and he and my Mom road the back roads of western Massachusetts, wholesaling the kits and related army surplus (soap, toothbrushes, etc,) to mom and pop stores and general stores. The ledger and calendar book from his small business back then has a blank page for June 6, 1947, the day I was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

__________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Liberal Racism <\/em><\/strong>(Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) (First edition published by
Viking\/Penguin, 1997 and 1998).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York<\/em><\/strong>  (W. W. Norton & Co.), 1990; paperback (Norton), 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Search of New<\/em><\/strong> York<\/strong> <\/em>(Transaction Books), 1988. Editor. An anthology of
reportage, essays, reminiscences, and photography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Jews<\/em><\/strong> (Vintage paperback), 1971. Co-editor, with Alan Mintz, of essays by young religious radicals of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapters in Anthologies<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Normative Tensions: Academic Freedom in International Education, <\/em><\/strong>Kevin W. Gray, editor. (Rowman & Littlefield\/Lexington Books, 2022). Chapter: “Innocents Abroad? Liberal Educators in Illiberal Societies”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orwell Into the Twenty-First Century,<\/em><\/strong> Thomas Cushman and John Rodden, eds. (Paradigm Press, 2005). Chapter: \u201cOrwell\u2019s Smelly Little Orthodoxies \u2013 and Ours\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Way Out,<\/em><\/strong> Owen Fiss, Joshua Cohen eds. (Princeton U. Press, 2003); Essay: \u201cAgainst Social Engineering,\u201d<\/strong> a response to an \u201curban removal\u201d manifesto by Yale Law Professor. Owen Fiss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One America?,<\/em><\/strong> Stanley Renshon, ed. (Georgetown U. Press, published July, 2001). Essay: \u201cAmerican National Identity in a Post-national Age.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Empire City: New York Through the Centuries,<\/em><\/strong> Kenneth Jackson and David Dunbar, eds. (Columbia U. Press, October, 2002). Chapter: \u201cBoodling, Bigotry, and Cosmopolitanism,\u201d<\/strong> about New York City in the late 1980s. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post-Mortem: The O.J. Verdict.<\/em><\/strong> Jeffrey Abramson, editor (Basic Books, 1996). Essay, \u201cRacial Theater,\u201d <\/strong>about the public staging of the O.J. trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Republic Guide to the Candidates, 1996<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong> Andrew Sullivan, editor (Basic Books, 1996). Essay on Bill Bradley,<\/strong> the non-candidate, and his concerns about civil society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blacks and Jews: Alliances and Arguments<\/em><\/strong>, <\/em>Paul Berman, editor (Delacorte, 1995). Chapter: \u201cThe Battle for Enlightenment at City College,\u201d<\/strong> on CUNY Prof. Leonard Jeffries and identity politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debating Affirmative Action.<\/em><\/strong> Nicolaus Mills, editor. (Dell, 1994). Essay,<\/strong> \u201cAffirmative Action\u2019s Outer Limits.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tikkun Anthology,<\/em><\/strong> Michael Lerner, editor, 1992. Essay<\/strong>, \u201cDemagoguery in America: Wrong Turns in the Politics of Race.\u201d<\/strong> (One of the early, classic critiques of identity politics in the American left.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Teaching<\/strong> (Adjunct and Lecturer only)<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Harvard College, Expository Writing, 1975-76 (three one-semester courses)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northeastern University, Sociology of American Literature, 1976 (one semester)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queens College, Expository Writing, 1977-78 (two one-semester courses)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York University, Metropolitan Studies Program, \u201cCities in Transition,\u201d fall, 1985, and \u201cUrban Housing,\u201d spring, 1986<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cooper Union, Humanities Department, \u201cRace and Civil Society,\u201d 1993<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yale College, Residential College Seminar, \u201cNew Conceptions of American National Identity,\u201d 1999 \u2013 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yale College, lecturer, Political Science Department, \u201cJournalism, Liberalism, and Democracy,\u201d 2006 -2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalism<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Essayist, book reviewer, New York Times,<\/em> Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

National Public Radio, 1997-2002, Occasional commentator, \u201cAll Things Considered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York Daily News, <\/em>1993-96. Political columnist, op-ed page, twice a week; covered city government and politics, race relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WCBS-TV \u201cSunday Edition\u201d, New York \u201cReporters\u2019
Roundtable,\u201d regular panelist, 1994-1995<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York Newsday, <\/em>1988-93. Editorial board member; deputy editor of Viewpoints section, op-ed page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York Observer, <\/em>1987-88. Columnist, op-ed page, city affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dissent<\/em>, editorial board, 1982 \u2013 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Village Voice, Prospect Press, City Limits, <\/em>1982-87. Freelance writer, columnist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Brooklyn Mercury,<\/em> 1978-79. Editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper serving predominantly non-white neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Fort Greene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Government<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, 1979-82. Speechwriter.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

U.S. Rep. Silivo Conte (R-MA), 1968, intern, Capitol Hill office.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seyla Benhabib and Jim Sleeper, 2007                Jim Sleeper, a writer and teacher on American civic culture and politics, was a lecturer in political science at Yale from 1999-2020. His reportage and commentary have appeared in most major American newspapers and magazines. In the 1990s he appeared occasionally on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5307,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions\/5307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}