Professor Reed’s research interests include American and Afro-American politics and political thought; urban politics, and American political development.

Recent publications include: 

  • Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals,” in Harper’s Magazine. (link)
  • An exchange concerning the American left in The American Prospect with Bill Meyerson (Meyerson: link) (Reed response: link). 
  • An interview with Bill Moyers on “The Surrender of American liberals.” (link
  • A podcast interview with Dissent Magazine’s “Belabored”. (link

Selected Publications: 

  • Renewing Black Intellectual History: The Ideological and Material Foundations of African American Thought (with Kenneth W. Warren, et al, Paradigm Press, 2010)
  • Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and the Retreat from Racial Equality (editor, Westview Press, 2001) (Buy this book online)
  • Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (The New Press, 2000) (Buy this book from the publisher)
  • Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era (University of Minnesota Press, 1999) (Buy this book from the publisher)
  • W.E.B. Dubois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (Oxford University Press, 1997) (Buy this book from the publisher)
  • The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics (Yale University Press, 1986)
  • Race, Politics, and Culture: Critical Essays on the Radicalism of the 1960s (editor) (Greenwood Press, 1986)

Courses Taught: 

  • Race and 20th-Century American Political Social Thought
  • Power, Culture, and American Cities
  • Labor and the Left in Postwar American Politics

Featuring this expert

​Cheap Talk on Race and Xenophobia Keeps Americans from Confronting Economic and Political Peril

Article | Nov 2, 2018

Adolph Reed, who researches race and politics, warns that “identitarian” politics can conceal the structural inequities of capitalism