 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Nathan Schneider | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1984 (age 40–41) |
| Education | Brown University, University of California - Santa Barbara,H-B Woodlawn |
| Occupation | professor |
| Employer | University of Colorado Boulder, College Of Media, Communications And Information |
| Known for | Platform cooperativism, coveringOccupy Wall Street |
| Website | nathanschneider |
Nathan Schneider (born 1984) is an American scholar and former journalist, who specializes in economic justice in the online economy. Since 2015, he has been a professor of media studies at theUniversity of Colorado Boulder.
Much of Schneider's early work concerned the interrelation of religion, science, and politics, which grew out of his academic work in religious studies. He has written investigative articles on theJohn Templeton Foundation forThe Nation[1] andThe Chronicle of Higher Education.[2][3] With the support of a Knight Grant for Reporting on Religion and American Public Life throughUSC's Annenberg School,[4] he did extensive reporting on the evangelical Christian philosopher and debaterWilliam Lane Craig, which resulted in articles that appeared inCommonweal,The Chronicle of Higher Education, andKilling the Buddha.
His first book,God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet is a history of proofs for and against the existence of God, as well as a memoir of his own conversion to Catholicism as a teenager. A starred review inBooklist said, "Schneider makes an often dry subject quite companionable."[5] InReligion Dispatches, Gordon Haber wrote, "Schneider defines the next generation of public intellectuals—fiercely articulate, indefatigably curious and Internet-savvy."[6]
Schneider's writing on religion often deals with neglected traditions of political radicalism. Schneider's profile of literary criticElaine Scarry forThe Chronicle of Higher Education,[7][8] for instance, compared her scholarship with the religious anti-nuclear movement. In 2014Al Jazeera America published his story of a Catholic nun with a secret ministry to the transgender community, which was applauded byBuzzfeed[9] andThe Advocate.[10]
In 2014, he was named a columnist forAmerica, a national Catholic weekly.[11]
Schneider was among the first journalists to cover theOccupy Wall Street movement during its planning stages and wrote about it forHarper's Magazine,The Nation,The New York Times, and other publications, as well as in his 2013 bookThank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse, published by University of California Press. He claims that his coverage of Occupy Wall Street served as the basis for a scene about Occupy Wall Street in HBO'sThe Newsroom.[12]Democracy Now! regularly turned to him as a correspondent about the movement,[13] and he also appeared on NPR'sThe Brian Lehrer Show,[14] Al Jazeera'sInside Story,[15] and an oral history of the movement byVanity Fair,[16] and Ezra Klein ofThe Washington Post referred to one of his articles as "the single best place to start" learning about the movement.[17] Interviews with Schneider appear in two of the feature films made about the movement,American Autumn[18] and99%. WriterRebecca Solnit wrote the foreword toThank You, Anarchy, which was adapted into an article for theLos Angeles Times.[19]
Religion continued to feature prominently in how Schneider covered the Occupy movement. According to Nick Pinto ofAl Jazeera America, "Schneider's education and much of his writing are concerned with religion, and he relies heavily on Christian vocabulary to describe his experience in Occupy Wall Street."[20] He personally became involved in the movement as an early member of the group Occupy Catholics.[21] An article on the book atReligious Left Law referred to Schneider as "is clearly a brilliant young thinker in the heart of what we might call the revitalization of the religious left."[22]
The cover ofThank You, Anarchy bears a quotation from aNew York Observer article—"objective journalism, this is not"—referring not to the book but to the ambiguity of Schneider's role in the movement as a journalist and activist.[23] In a later interview withMalcolm Harris ofThe New Inquiry, Schneider stated, "I agonized a lot about the participant-reporter thing, probably more than I should have."[24]
 | Thisbiography of a living personrelies too much onreferences toprimary sources. Please help by addingsecondary or tertiary sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately, especially if potentiallylibelous or harmful. Find sources: "Nathan Schneider" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Following his reporting on Occupy Wall Street, Schneider began to focus on stories related toco-operative economics. ForVice magazine, he wrote the most complete profile to date[when?] ofEnric Duran, the Catalan activist and fugitive who founded the Catalan Integral Cooperative and Faircoop.[25] ForThe Nation, he reported on "How Pope Francis Is Reviving Radical Catholic Economics."[26] He also published a number of articles and interviews on emerging cooperative business models for online platforms.
Schneider has been a leading advocate forplatform cooperativism. In November 2015, together with New School professor Trebor Scholz, Schneider co-organized a two-day conference billed as "a coming-out party for the cooperative Internet."[27] More than 1,000 people attended, including figures such as legal scholarYochai Benkler, New York City Council MemberMaria del Carmen Arroyo, andZipcar founderRobin Chase. This led to the publication of a book, which Schneider co-edited with Scholz,Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet, published in 2016 by OR Books.
His bookEverything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy was published in September 2018 by Nation Books. It collects several years of reporting on cooperative enterprise.
| This section of abiography of a living persondoes notinclude anyreferences or sources. Please help by addingreliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately. Find sources: "Nathan Schneider" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
After becoming a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder,[when?][citation needed] Schneider studied democratic governance in online spaces. He leads "Media Economies Design Lab", which "experiments with democratic ownership and governance in the online economy" and contributed to building a research group "Metagov" on online governance. His 2024 bookGovernable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life contends that democracy has been hindered by the dominant designs of social media and explores how to enable more democratic practice in daily online life.
| Thisbiography of a living personrelies too much onreferences toprimary sources. Please help by addingsecondary or tertiary sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately, especially if potentiallylibelous or harmful. Find sources: "Nathan Schneider" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Schneider has served as an editor for two online publications:Waging Nonviolence,[28] "a source for original news and analysis about struggles for justice and peace", andKilling the Buddha,[29] "an online magazine of religion, culture, and politics".
Additionally, he has been an editor-at-large forThe Immanent Frame,[30] the online forum of theSocial Science Research Council. He is a contributing editor forReligion Dispatches[31] andYes! magazine.
| External audio | |
|---|---|
 Nathan Schneider — The Fabric of Our Identity Krista Tippett's public radio showOn Being |
