Writers

Noam Chomsky

A professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky is renowned throughout the world for speaking out against the Vietnam War as well as his constant examinations of U.S. foreign policy and mutations in the media. Recognized as one of the leading visionaries in the world, Chomsky has authored several best selling books, including Manufacturing Consent and The New Military Humanism.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich is a social critic and essayist. Her book Nickel and Dimed (2002) was a national bestseller in the United States. She is a prolific journalist who peppers her writing with a sardonic sense of humor. Ehrenreich has also written for the Mother Jones, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms, New Republic, Z Magazine, Salon.com, and other publications. In 2004, she wrote a guest column for one month for the New York Times while regular columnist Tom Friedman was on leave writing a book. She is the vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, and said on PBS News Hour that the fact that married women voted more for Bush in 2004 is evidence that “women continue to have less authority or influence within a marriage tend to be economically worn down person and accept the views of the male.”

Arianna Huffington

The Cambridge graduate is a nationally syndicated columnist and author. In 2003, Huffington ran as an independent candidate in the California recall election connecting with a grassroots campaign and targeting the corrupting properties of special interest money on politics. She also works with A Place Called Home that works with at-risk children in Los Angeles as well as other programs that promote community solutions to social problems.

John Pilger

John Pilger is an Australian journalist. Pilger’s career in journalism began in 1958, and he has developed his reputation through both his reporting and the various books and documentary films that he has written or produced. On the right he has been subjected to ridicule and scorn, with the late Auberon Waugh in Britain coining the verb ‘to pilger’. He is best known in Britain for his investigative documentaries, particularly those on Cambodia and East Timor. He has acted as a war correspondent during conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra.

John Robbins

The only son of the founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, Robbins walked away from millions of dollars to pursue a life focusing on the dietary links between environment and health. Considered to be one of the most eloquent and powerful spokespersons in the world for a sane, ethical and sustainable future, John has been a featured and keynote speaker at major conferences sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Beyond War, Oxfam, the Sierra Club, the Humane Society of the United States, the United Nations Environmental Program, UNICEF, and many other organizations dedicated to creating a healthy, just, and sustainable way of life.. Robbins is well known for his books Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution.

Arundhati Roy

Roy was formally trained as an architect but turned to writing and political activism as her calling. Enduring the rough squatter life style in her adolescent years, Roy is very knowledgeable about the struggle endured by the masses that compose the underbelly of the “world’s largest democracy”. Her writing is also critical of the World Trade Organization and American foreign policy, writing as a member of the American global empire.

Bertrand Russell

One of the most influential mathematicians, philosophers and logicians working (mostly) in the 20th century, an important political liberal, activist and a populariser of philosophy. Millions looked up to Russell as a sort of prophet of the creative and rational life; at the same time, his stance on many topics was extremely controversial. He was born in 1872, at the height of Britain’s economic and political ascendancy, and died of influenza in 1970, when Britain’s empire had all but vanished and her power had been drained in two victorious but debilitating world wars. At his death, however, his voice still carried moral authority, for he was one of the world’s most influential critics of nuclear weapons and the American war in Vietnam.

Peter Singer

One of the most famous, and controversial, philosophers of our time, Peter Singer currently serves as the DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. In 1975, he wrote the groundbreaking work Animal Liberation, which is credited with stimulating the Western animal rights movement. Singer has also written extensively on topics such as euthanasia, abortion, infanticide, and other writings on living an ethical life.

Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser is an American journalist and author. His most famous book to date is Fast Food Nation, a muckraking exposé on the practices of the fast food industry, especially focusing on its sanitary conditions and treatment of workers. Fast Food Nation evolved from a two-part article in Rolling Stone Magazine. He has also written Reefer Madness, a book about the black market in marijuana, migrant labor and pornography.

Howard Zinn

Zinn is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University. In addition to being one of the world’s most prominent social critics and historians, Zinn is also a high acclaimed author, garnering much attention with the publication of A People’s History of the United States.