Charles Derber
Professor
Biography
Professor Derber’s current work focuses on the crises of capitalism, globalization, corporate power, American militarism, the culture of hegemony, the climate crisis, and the new peace and global justice movements. The world is becoming as dominated by business values and power today as America was by the Robber Barons a century ago. Derber is persuaded that the overwhelming economic and cultural power of global corporations, increasingly melded with the political and military hegemonic power of the American government and the crises of global capitalism and global climate change, are together an integrated crisis that is now the pre-eminent social issue of the 21st century, and that we need a new vision and political movement that can offer an alternative. Professor Derber’s research is oriented toward 1) the systemic analysis of the intertwined crises we face and 2) analysis of the transformative potential of social movements arising to create a more democratic and egalitarian order. Derber’s most recent book is Welcome to the Revolution (see below). It explores the anti-Trump resistance movement and the anti-systemic universalizing movement needed to transform contemporary militarized capitalism. In conjunction with that book, Derber has brought together leaders of unions and many social justice movement, to analyze where we go from here. With Routledge Publishers, Derber is editing a new Universalizing Resistance Book Series where leading critical public intellectuals and activists analyze and flesh out stories of mass anti-systemic resistance that moves beyond the siloes of our current Left and Progressive movements. Derber is also helping direct a series of films and books about and with Noam Chomsky, funded by the Wallace Action Fund.