Joel Kovel

Joel Kovel "was born in 1936, in Brooklyn, NY, and spent his early years there and on Long Island. He attended Yale College and then studied medicine at Columbia University (MD, 1961) and psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, eventually becoming Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Residency Training at that institution. He also holds a diploma in psychoanalysis from the Downstate Medical Center Institute. After practicing psychiatry and psychoanalysis for twenty four years, he left these professions in the mid-1980s, in part because of dissatisfaction with the health care system. Since 1988 he has been Professor of Social Studies at Bard College, Annandale, NY.

"Joel Kovel is both a scholar and an activist. In the former capacity he has published nine books and over a hundred articles and reviews. His books include White Racism, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1972; A Complete Guide to Therapy; The Age of Desire (in which his work in the psychiatric-psychoanalytic system is detailed); Against the State of Nuclear Terror; In Nicaragua; The Radical Spirit; History and Spirit(1991); Red Hunting in the Promised Land (1994), a study of anticommunist repression in America; and The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or The End of the World (Zed, 2002). Since 2003 he has been Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal, Capitalism Nature Socialism.

"As an activist, Joel Kovel has been engaged in struggles for peace and justice since the Vietnam War era. He has worked within the antiwar and antinuclear movements, the solidarity movements in Central America and the Caribbean, the movements for democratic media, and, increasingly, for ecological transformation. He lived in Nicaragua for a period in 1986, and accompanied Pastors for Peace as they broke the US blockade on Cuba in their 1994 Friendshipment. He has acted in films, worked frequently with the Bread and Puppet theatre, and lectured on four continents.

"Kovel joined the Green Party since 1990. In 1998, he was the Green Party candidate for US Senator from New York, and in 2000 sought their Presidential nomination." He is married to Deedee Halleck. "In April, 2012, he was baptized into St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. Presently, Kovel is working on a memoir, The Lost Traveler’s Dream, that will explain all this. Then he plans to write a book on the predicament of Jewishness; and another, on the philosophy of nature, spirit, and social transformation." 


 * Editorial Advisory Board, Amandla
 * Director, International Endowment for Democracy
 * Advisory Editor, Socialist Resistance

Talks

 * Joel Kovel on Eco-Socialism, Toronto, Ontario, April 3, 2007.

Movies

 * A Really Inconvenient Truth: A critical essay on Al Gore's 'An inconvenient truth' with Joel Kovel. Produced by Cambiz A. Khosravi. 2007 90 minutes DVD. review

Commentary

 * John Boy, "Foul Play at Bard? Controversy Ensues After College Terminates Kovel", CUNY Advocate, May 2009.
 * John Halle, "Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair: Bard and the Lobby", Counterpunch, November 9, 2009.

Articles

 * Joel Kovel, "End Times in Copenhagen", Canadian Dimension, October 29, 2009.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Pro-Israel lobby
 * Leon Botstein
 * Jonathan Brent