Joel
Kovel CNS Editor in Chief
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 ten books and over a hundred and fifty 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; The Enemy
of Nature: The End of Capitalism or The End of the World? (Zed, 2002,
2007); and Overcoming Zionism (Pluto, 2007). 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 six
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.
Kovel is married, has three children, three stepchildren and five
grandchildren. He lives in Willow, a rural district of Woodstock,
in Ulster County, and New York City.