Jim Sleeper, a writer and teacher on American civic culture and politics and a lecturer in political science at Yale, is the author of The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York (W.W. Norton, 1990) and Liberal Racism (Viking, 1997, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). His "civic-republican" philosophy, described in his essay "Looking for America" at http://www.jimsleeper.com/?p=19 makes him a critic of both left-liberal racial politics and, more recently, of neo-conservative national-security state politics.

From 1988 to 1995 Sleeper was an editor and editorial board member at New York Newsday and the Daily News. As a political columnist for the Daily News for three years during and after the 1993 mayoral campaign in which Rudolph Giuliani defeated the city’s first African-American mayor, David Dinkins, Sleeper anticipated Giuliani’s victory in a series of columns on the city’s changing political culture. Since 2006 he has been an occasional blogger at www.tpmcafe.com (Talking Points Memo Cafe), with columns on the American news media, the 2008 American presidential election, and Israel's war in Gaza. His "Obama Chronicles," posted originally in TPM and Dissent, trace the arc of his own and others' rising support for Obama during the 2008 campaign and are collected at his website at http://www.jimsleeper.com/?p=11

His reportage and commentary have also appeared in Harper’s. The New Republic, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Washington Monthly, Dissent, Commonweal, Democracy Journal, and many other publications. He has appeared on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, the Charlie Rose show, and National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” and has been an occasional commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” WNYC (New York's NPR station), and Talking Points Memo.com.

Among his more noted recent columns,"Why Rudy Giuliani Really Shouldn't Be President": [754726]. A column on how New York Times columnist David Brooks mishandled the mortgage crisis: [754727]. Sleeper posted a noted series of columns on Israel's Gaza War of 2008-2009, at http://www.jimsleeper.com/?p=7. He was interviewed about his Gaza columns on National Public Radio's New York station, WNYC, in January, 2009 [754728] . A broader range of his published material is presented in thematic sections at http://www.jimsleeper.com

Sleeper is a member of the editorial board of the quarterly Dissent, for which he edited In Search of New York (1987), a special edition re-published by Transaction Books, containing original essays by the quarterly’s founding editor, Irving Howe, as well as by Ada Louise Huxtable, Michael Harrington, Alfred Kazin, Jim Chapin, Paul Berman, and many other notable contributors.

A Longmeadow, Massachusetts native and Yale College graduate (1969), Sleeper holds a doctorate in education from Harvard (1977). He has taught urban studies and writing at Harvard and, upon moving to New York, at 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’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

At Yale Sleeper has taught seminars on new conceptions of American national identity and on journalism, liberalism, and democracy. He is married to Seyla Benhabib , Yale's Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy.

Bibliography

Liberal Racism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) (First edition published byViking/Penguin, 1997 and 1998).

The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York(W. W. Norton & Co.), 1990; paperback (Norton), 1991.

In Search of New York (Transaction Books), 1988. Editor. An anthology ofreportage, essays, reminiscences, and photography that was a special issue of Dissent magazine in 1987. Contributors include Irving Howe, Ada Louise Huxtable, Michael Harrington, Jim Chapin, Paul Berman, and many others.

The New Jews' (Vintage paperback), 1971. Co-editor; essays by young religiousradicals of the time.

Chapters in Anthologies:

Orwell Into the Twenty-First Century Thomas Cushman and John Rodden, eds.(Paradigm Press, 2005). Chapter: “Orwell’s Smelly Little Orthodoxies – andOurs”

A Way Out Owen Fiss, Joshua Cohen eds. (Princeton U. Press, 2003); Essay,“Against Social Engineering,” a response to an “urban removal” manifesto byYale Law Professor. Owen Fiss.

One America? Stanley Renshon, ed. (Georgetown U. Press, 2001). Essay:“American National Identity in a Post-national Age.”

Empire City: New York Through the Centuries Kenneth Jackson and DavidDunbar, eds. (Columbia U. Press, October, 2002). Chapter: “Boodling,Bigotry, and Cosmopolitanism,” about New York City in the late 1980s.

Post-Mortem: The O.J. Verdict Jeffrey Abramson, editor (Basic Books, 1996).Essay, “Racial Theater,” about the public staging of the O.J. trial.

The New Republic Guide to the Candidates, 1996 Andrew Sullivan, editor(Basic Books, 1996). Essay on Bill Bradley, the non-candidate, and hisconcerns about civil society.

Blacks and Jews: Alliances and Arguments Paul Berman, editor (Delacorte,1995). Chapter: “The Battle for Enlightenment at City College,” on CUNYProf. Leonard Jeffries and identity politics.

Debating Affirmative Action Nicolaus Mills, editor. (Dell, 1994). Essay,“Affirmative Action’s Outer Limits.”

Tikkun Anthology Michael Lerner, editor, 1992. Essay, “Demagoguery inAmerica: Wrong Turns in the Politics of Race.” (One of the early, classiccritiques of identity politics in the American left.)

External links

• Interview, "Letting Go of Race," in Atlantic Monthly 1997
• 2003 biographical interview