Rich Benjamin | |
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Born | New York City, United States |
Education | Wesleyan University (BA) Stanford University (PhD) |
Occupation(s) | Author, television commentator, cultural critic |
Website | richbenjamin |
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.[1][2][3] He is also a lecturer and a public intellectual, who has discussed issues on NPR, PBS, CNN and MSNBC.[4] His writing appears in The New York Times,[5] The New Yorker,[6] The Guardian[7] and The New York Review of Books.[8]
Benjamin's work focuses on US politics and culture, democracy, money, high finance, class, Blacks, Whites, Latinos, public policy, global cultural transformation, and demographic change.[6][9]
Benjamin has been contributing essays to The New Yorker since 2017.[10]
Benjamin's book, Searching for Whitopia, was the subject of a TED Talk that has been viewed more than 2.8 million times.[11] The book has received coverage on NPR[12] and MSNBC.[13]
In 2021 Benjamin delivered the Poynter Lecture at Yale Law School 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."[14]
He has presented his research on money, blockchain, and decentralization at a conference on technology.[15]
In 2021, he served as a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.[16]
Benjamin was in Princeton, NJ in 2023 for his research and teaching post as the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University.[17]
In 2023-2024, Benjamin served as a Harvard-Radcliffe Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.[18] There he continued research on his major field of interest, high finance—the social-scientific dimensions of quants, flash trading, hedge funds, extreme wealth, and risk.[19]
As a doctoral student at Stanford University, Benjamin studied with Professors Tim Lenoir and Terry Winograd, an adviser to the founders of Google.