Jim Sleeper, Biographical Sketch and CV
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 reportage and commentary have appeared in Harper’s, The New Republic, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Washington Monthly, Dissent, and many other publications. He has appeared several times each 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.”
As the New York City political columnist for the New York Daily News for three years during and after the pivotal 1993 mayoral campaign in which Rudolph Giuliani defeated the city’s first African-American mayor, David Dinkins, Sleeper anticipated and interpreted Giuliani’s victory in a widely noted series of columns on the city’s changing political culture, written across the eight months of the campaign. He had served earlier on the editorial board of New York Newsday (1988-1993) and was deputy-editor of its opinion section.
Sleeper is a member of the editorial board of 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, and many other distinguished contributors.
A Longmeadow, Massachusetts native and Yale College graduate (1969), Sleeper holds a doctorate in education from Harvard (1977). In the 1970s and ’80s, 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’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.
Books
Liberal Racism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) (First edition published by
Viking/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 of
reportage, essays, reminiscences, and photography.
The New Jews (Vintage paperback), 1971. Co-editor; essays by young religious
radicals 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 – and
Ours”
A Way Out, Owen Fiss, Joshua Cohen eds. (Princeton U. Press, 2003); Essay,
“Against Social Engineering,” a response to an “urban removal” manifesto by
Yale 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 David
Dunbar, 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 his
concerns about civil society.
Blacks and Jews: Alliances and Arguments, Paul Berman, editor (Delacorte,
1995). Chapter: “The Battle for Enlightenment at City College,” on CUNY
Prof. 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 in
America: Wrong Turns in the Politics of Race.” (One of the early, classic
critiques of identity politics in the American left.)
Teaching
(Adjunct and Lecturer only)
Harvard College, Expository Writing, 1975-76 (two one-semester courses)
Northeastern University, Sociology of American Literature, 1976 (one semester)
Queens College, Expository Writing, 1977-78 (two one-semester courses)
New York University, Metropolitan Studies Program, “Cities in Transition,” fall, 1985, and “Urban Housing,” spring, 1986
The Cooper Union, Humanities Department, “Race and Civil Society,” 1993
Yale College, Residential College Seminar, “New Conceptions of American National Identity,” fall, 1999.
Yale College, lecturer, Political Science Department, “Journalism, Liberalism, and Democracy,” spring, 2001, fall, 2002; “New Conceptions of American National Identity,” spring 2003, spring 2004, fall, 2004, spring 2006
(Yale student course evaluations, 2003 and 2004, below)
Journalism
Essayist, book reviewer, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post
National Public Radio, 1997-present. Occasional commentator, “All Things Considered.”
New York Daily News, 1993-96. Political columnist, op-ed page, twice a week;
covered city government and politics, race relations.
WCBS-TV “Sunday Edition”, New York “Reporters’
Roundtable,” regular panelist, 1994-1995
New York Newsday, 1988-93. Editorial board member; deputy editor, op-ed pg.
New York Observer, 1987-88. Columnist, op-ed page, city affairs.
Dissent, editorial board.
Village Voice, Prospect Press, City Limits, 1982-87. Freelance writer, columnist.
North Brooklyn Mercury, 1978-79. Editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper serving predominantly non-white neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Fort Greene.
Government
New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, 1979-82. Speechwriter.
U.S. Rep. Silvio Conte (R-MA), 1968. undergraduate intern, Capitol Hill office.