Bhaskar Sunkara

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Bhaskar Sunkara
Sunkara in 2016
Born (1989-06-20) June 20, 1989 (age 36)
White Plains, New York, U.S.
EducationGeorge Washington University (BA)
Occupations
  • Publisher
  • writer
  • editor
Years active2010–present
TitleFounder of Jacobin, president of The Nation.

Bhaskar Sunkara (born June 1989) is an American political writer. He is the founding editor of Jacobin, the president of The Nation, and publisher of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy.[1] He is a former vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, as well as a columnist for The Guardian US.

Early life

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Sunkara was born in the United States to parents of Indian ancestry who had immigrated to the US from Trinidad and Tobago a year before he was born. His father was a Telugu migrant from Andhra Pradesh while his mother's family had migrated to the island in the 19th century as indentured labourers from Punjab and Bihar.[1][2] Sunkara credited his politicization to his reading as a teenager: from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm he developed an interest in Leon Trotsky, reading his autobiography and Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography, before progressing to the New Left, including thinkers such as Lucio Magri, Ralph Miliband, Perry Anderson and the journal New Left Review. He joined the Democratic Socialists of America at the age of 17, becoming editor of the DSA youth section's blog The Activist.[3][4] He went on to study history at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he conceived the idea of Jacobin: after his sophomore year, he missed two semesters due to illness during which time he read Marxist works.[4]

Career

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By the summer of 2010, he was preparing to return to his studies and inspired to create the magazine, which launched online in September of that year and in print at the beginning of 2011.[1] Sunkara described Jacobin as a radical publication, "largely the product of a younger generation not quite as tied to the Cold War paradigms that sustained the old leftist intellectual milieus like Dissent or New Politics".[5] The New York Times interviewed Sunkara in January 2013, commenting on Jacobin's unexpected success and engagement with mainstream liberalism.[6] In late 2014, he was interviewed by New Left Review on the political orientation and future trajectory of the publication[1] and in March 2016 was featured in a lengthy Vox profile.[7] Sunkara writes for Vice magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets.[6] He has appeared on the PBS Tavis Smiley program, MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes, and the FX show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.

On February 23, 2022, The Nation named Sunkara to the role of president, replacing Erin O'Mara.[8] In June 2023, Sunkara led The Nation's relaunch of Bookforum magazine.[9]

Awards and recognition

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In 2020, Sunkara was named to Fortune magazine's "40 Under 40" list under the "Government and Politics" category.[10]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Anderson, Perry (November–December 2014). "New masses, new media: Bhaskar Sunkara "Project Jacobin" interview". New Left Review. II (90). New Left Review.
  2. ^ Sunkara, Bhaskar (December 1, 2014). "Bhaskar Sunkara Project Jacobin". New Left Review (90): 29–43.
  3. ^ McIntosh, Don (June 18, 2021). "Talking Socialism: Interviewing Jacobin's Bhaskar Sunkara". Democratic Left. Democratic Socialists of America. I did some work with YDS at the time when I was in college, but primarily my DSA work then was revamping The Activist blog, where a lot of early contributors to Jacobin cohered. DSA obviously was very formative. So it's kind of like I can't really imagine what I was like before DSA because I'm 31 and it's been 14 years since I joined DSA.
  4. ^ a b Matthews, Dylan (March 21, 2016). "Inside Jacobin: How a socialist magazine is winning the left's war of ideas". Vox. Archived from the original on June 5, 2025. But Sunkara's allegiances have shifted; his loyalties now lie with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the biggest remnant of the once-mighty Socialist Party of America following a 1972 split over the Vietnam War. Sunkara joined DSA at age 17 and got his writing start on the Activist, the blog of DSA's youth chapter. That's where he met a number of early Jacobin writers, including contributing editor Chris Maisano and "Four Futures" author Frase. Sunkara is still heavily affiliated with DSA, serving as the group's vice chair.
  5. ^ "No Short-Cuts: Interview with the Jacobin". Idiom magazine. March 16, 2011. Archived from the original on July 11, 2019. Retrieved November 19, 2014.
  6. ^ a b Schuessler, Jennifer (January 1, 2013). "A Young Publisher Takes Marx into the Mainstream". The New York Times.
  7. ^ Matthews, Dylan (March 21, 2016). "Inside Jacobin: how a socialist magazine is winning the left's war of ideas". Vox. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  8. ^ Room, Press (February 23, 2022). "The Nation Names Bhaskar Sunkara its New President". The Nation. Retrieved February 24, 2022.
  9. ^ Dwyer, Kate (June 22, 2022). "Bookforum Is Returning, Months After Its Closure Was Mourned in the Literary World". The New York Times. Retrieved August 27, 2023.
  10. ^ "Bhaskar Sunkara | 2020 40 under 40 in Government and Politics". Fortune. Retrieved September 13, 2020.
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