Biography

Michael Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. Some of his writings have been translated into Arabic, Azeri, Bangla, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

“... this tough, hilarious, right-on mix of scholar and street.”

                                                                     KPFA-Pacifica, 1994 
Michael Parenti has won awards from Project Censored, the Caucus for a New Political Science, the city of Santa Cruz, New Jersey Peace Action, the Social Science Research Council, the Society for Religion in Higher Education, and other organizations. In 2007 he was awarded a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from U.S. Representative Barbara Lee.
During his earlier teaching career he received grants or fellowships from the Louis Rabinowitz Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Brown University, Yale University, State University of New York, and the University of Illinois. For several years he was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
He now serves on the advisory boards of Independent Progressive Politics Network, Education Without Borders, and the Jasenovic Foundation; as well as the advisory editorial boards of New Political Science and Nature, Society and Thought. He also served for some 12 years as a judge for Project Censored.
He is the author of twenty-three books:
Some 320 articles of his have appeared in scholarly journals, political periodicals and various magazines and newspapers.
He appears on radio and television talk shows to discuss current issues and ideas from his published works. Dr. Parenti’s talks and commentaries are played on radio stations and cable community access stations to enthusiastic audiences in the United States, Canada, and abroad.
He lectures on college campuses and before a wide range of community audiences, peace groups, labor organizations, scholarly conferences, and various other venues. His books are enjoyed by both lay readers and scholars, and have been used extensively in college courses. Among the many topics he treats are:
  • Theocracy and Other Religious Sins
  • Democracy and Economic Power
  • Imperialism and U.S. Interventionism
  • Empires, Past and Present
  • Political Perceptions and Deceptions
  • Ethnic-Class Experience
  • Terrorism and Globalization
  • Political Bias in the U.S. News Media
  • Ideology and History
  • Race, Gender, and Class
  • The Overthrow of Communism
  • Fascism: Past and Present