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Rich Benjamin is an American cultural critic, anthropologist, and author. Benjamin is perhaps best known for the non-fiction book '' Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America''. He is also a lecturer and a
public intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or ...
, who has discussed issues on
NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
, PBS, CNN and
MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...
. His writing appears in ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' and the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
''/


Career

Benjamin's work focuses on
US politics The politics of the United States function within a framework of a constitutional federal republic and presidential system, with three distinct branches that share powers. These are: the U.S. Congress which forms the legislative branch, a ...
and culture, comparative world politics, money, class, Blacks,
Whites White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view. Description of populations as ...
, Latinos, public policy, global cultural transformation, and demographic change. Benjamin has been contributing essays to ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' since 2017. Benjamin speaks across the country on technology and
digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ...
.  He has presented talks at Techonomy and at conferences on Web 3.0, decentralization,
crypto Crypto commonly refers to: * Cryptocurrency, a type of digital currency secured by cryptography and decentralization * Cryptography, the practice and study of hiding information Crypto or Krypto may also refer to: Cryptography * Cryptanalysi ...
, and blockchain. Benjamin is one of the leading experts on whiteness in America—including how
demographic change Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as ...
affects social attitudes; how white migration patterns shape economic and political trends; and how perceptions/experiences of whiteness impact a person's and community's political behavior, as well as the democracy.  Benjamin's work exposes how a white conservative minority is working to dismantle democracy — voter suppression; threatening Electors; gerrymandering; undercutting information and expertise; and normalizing domestic terror and violence. Benjamin's investigation of Whitopia was the subject of a
TED Talk TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
that has been viewed more than 2.8 million times.  His book was one of the first to have predicted well in advance the social and-political forces creating the rise of "Trumpism" The book has received wide coverage on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. In 2020 Benjamin was appointed to the advisory board of New_Public, a community of thinkers, designers and technologists planning and building more democratic and usable digital public spaces for the future. In 2021 Benjamin delivered the Poynter Lecture at
Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & World ...
on "conservatism and Trumpism in the era of digital media—on how right-wing ideology, white fear, and the digital media ecosystem threaten democracy in America." In 2021, he served as a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the
New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress) ...
.


Education

As a doctoral student at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
, Benjamin studied with Professors Tim Lenoir and
Terry Winograd Terry Allen Winograd (born February 24, 1946) is an American professor of computer science at Stanford University, and co-director of the Stanford Human–Computer Interaction Group. He is known within the philosophy of mind and artificial intel ...
, an adviser to the founders of Google.


References


External links

* * * Living people American cultural critics American male journalists American columnists African-American writers American political writers American gay writers American LGBT writers White culture scholars Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century African-American people {{US-journalist-20thC-stub