Adolph Leonard Reed Jr. (born January 14, 1947) is an Americanprofessor emeritus ofpolitical science at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, specializing in studies of issues of racism and U.S. politics.

He has taught atYale,Northwestern, and theNew School for Social Research and he has written on racial andeconomic inequality. He is a contributing editor toThe New Republic and has been a frequent contributor toThe Progressive,The Nation, and other left-wing publications. He is a founding member of theU.S. Labor Party.

Born inThe Bronx, New York, Reed was raised inNew Orleans, Louisiana. In the late 1960s, he organized protests involving poor black people and antiwar soldiers.^[2]

He received his BA from theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1971 and his PhD fromAtlanta University in 1981.^[3] During his doctoral studies, he worked as an advisor toMaynard Jackson, Atlanta's first black mayor.^[3][4]

Reed's work on U.S. politics is notable for its critique ofidentity politics andanti-racism, particularly of their role in black politics.^[5][6][7]Reed has been a vocal critic of the policies and ideology of blackDemocratic politicians. For instance, he often criticized the politics ofBarack Obama, both before and during his presidency.^[8]

In an article inThe Village Voice published on January 16, 1996, Reed said of Obama:^[9]

In Chicago, for instance, we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentallybootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program — the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics, as inHaiti and wherever else theInternational Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn't been up to the challenge. We have to do better.^[10]

AfterSouth Carolina GovernorNikki Haley announced that African American RepublicanTim Scott would be named to the soon-to-be-openU.S. Senate seat in South Carolina, held byJim DeMint^[11] on December 17, 2012, Reed, in anop-ed published in the December 18, 2012 edition ofThe New York Times, stated: "It obscures the fact that modern black Republicans have been moretokens than signs of progress."^[12]

Reed supportedBernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.^[3]

• "The Myth of Class Reductionism".The New Republic (September 25, 2019)
• "Antiracism: a neoliberal alternative to a left".Dialectical Anthropology 42.2 (June 2018)
• "The Kerner Commission and the Irony of Antiracist Politics".Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 14.4 (December 2017)
• "The Post-1965 Trajectory of Race, Class, and Urban Politics in the United States Reconsidered".Labor Studies Journal 41.3 (2016)
• "The Black-Labor-Left Alliance in the Neoliberal Age".New Labor Forum 25.2 (2016)
• "No Easy Solutions".Jacobin (2016)
• "Doubling Down in Atlantic City".Jacobin (2016)
• "Bernie Sanders and the New Class Politics".Jacobin (2016)
• "From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much".Common Dreams (Monday, June 15, 2015)
• "The James Brown Theory of Black Liberation."Jacobin. (2015)
• "The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act: Selma in Fact and Fiction".New Labor Forum 24.2 (2015)
• "The Crisis of Labour and the Left in the United States'". (w/Mark Dudzic).Socialist Register. 51 (2014).
• "Michelle Goldberg Goes to Washington".Jacobin (2014)
• "Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals".Harpers (March 2014)
• "Adolph Reed, Jr. Responds".New Labor Forum 23.1 (2013)
• "Marx, Race, and Neoliberalism".New Labor Forum 22.1 (2013)
• "Race, Class, Crisis: The Discourse of Racial Disparity and its Analytical Discontents". (w/Merlin Chowkwanyun)Socialist Register 48 (2012)
• "Why Labor's Soldiering for the Democrats is a Losing Battle".New Labor Forum 19.3, (Fall 2010)
• "The 2004 Election in Perspective: The Myth of 'Cultural Divide' and the Triumph of Neoliberal Ideology".American Quarterly 57.1 (2005)
• "Reinventing the Working Class: A Study in Elite Image Manipulation".New Labor Forum 13.3 (Fall 2004)
• "Race and the Disruption of the New Deal Coalition".Urban Affairs Quarterly 27.2 (1991)
• "W.E.B. Dubois: A Perspective on the Bases of his Political Thought".Political Theory 13.3 (1985)
• "Pan-Africanism: Ideology for Liberation?".The Black Scholar 3 (September 1971)

• The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives. Verso Books (2022),ISBN 978-1839766268
• "Foreword" inCrashing the Party: From the Bernie Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement. (author) Heather Gautney. Verso Books (2018),ISBN 978-1786634320
• Renewing Black Intellectual History: The Ideological and Material Foundations of African American Thought (editor w/ Kenneth W. Warren). Routledge (2010),ISBN 978-1594516658
• "The study of black politics and the practice of black politics: their historical relation and evolution" inProblems and Methods in the Study of Politics edited by Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith, andTarek E. Masoud. Cambridge University Press (2009),ISBN 978-0521539432
• "Class Inequality, Liberal Bad Faith, and Neoliberalism: The True Disaster of Katrina" inCapitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction Edited by Nandini Gunewardena and Mark Schuller. AltaMira Press (2008),ISBN 978-0759111035
• "Introduction," "Class-ifying the Hurricane" inUnnatural Disaster: The Nation on Hurricane Katrina. Editor Betsy Reed. Nation Books. (2006),ISBN 978-1560259374
• "Why Is There No Black Political Movement?" inCultural Resistance Reader by Stephen Duncombe. Verso (2002),ISBN 978-1859843796
• Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and Our Retreat from Racial Equality. Routledge (2001),ISBN 978-0-8133-2051-9
• Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene. The New Press (2000),ISBN 978-1-56584-675-3
• Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era. University of Minnesota Press (1999),ISBN 978-0-8166-2681-6
• W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (1997),ISBN 978-0-19-513098-0
• "Demobilization in the New Black Political Regime: Ideological Capitulation and Radical Failure in the Postsegregation Era" inThe Bubbling Cauldron: Race, Ethnicity, and the Urban Crisis edited by Michael Smith and Joe Feagin. University of Minnesota Press (1995),ISBN 978-0816623327
• "The Allure of Malcolm X and the Changing Character of Black Politics" inMalcolm X: In Our Own Image edited by Joe Wood. St. Martin's Press (1992),ISBN 0-312-06609-0 Reprinted inStirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era.
• The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics (1986),ISBN 978-0-300-03543-8
• "Pan-Africanism as Black Liberalism: Du Bois and Garvey" inPan-Africanism: New Directions in Strategy edited by Ofuatey-Kodjoe. University Press of America (1986)
• Race, Politics, and Culture: Critical Essays on the Radicalism of the 1960s (editor) (1986),ISBN 978-0-313-24480-3
• "Black Particularity Reconsidered".Telos 39 (Spring 1979). New York: Telos Press. Reprinted inIs It Nation Time?: Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism Editor Eddie S. Glaude Jr. University of Chicago Press. (2002),ISBN 978-0226298221

• Articles by Reed inThe Nation
• Article by Reed inThe Progressive
• Reed at University of Pennsylvania's Political Science Department
• Race, Class and Crisis video presentation by Adolph Reed, recorded September 24, 2010
• Obama, Antiracism, and Rebuilding the American Left video presentation by Adolph Reed, recorded March 9, 2015
• Three Tremés, on David Simon'sTreme
• Reed is interviewed byBill Moyers on February 25, 2014, in which his article,The Surrender of American Liberals, published in the March 2014 edition ofHarper's Magazine is discussed, along with other topics

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