Tom Reifer Associate

Our people — Associate

Tom Reifer is Professor of Sociology, and Affiliated Faculty in Asian Studies, Ethnic Studies, Latin American Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies, at the University of San Diego, and an official Freedom Writers Teacher, working with the Freedom Writers Foundation (Long Beach, California), and most recently, coauthor, with Carlton D. Floyd, of The American Dream and Dreams Deferred: A Dialectical Fairy Tale (Lexington, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield, 2023). He has been a long-time activist in our movement of movements, including as a rank-and-file trade union activist and organizer. He is currently working on a book "Lawyers, Guns & Money: Wall Street & the American Century"

Latest work

The Internationalism of Mike Davis

On October 25, 2022, Mike Davis, the legendary scholar-activist and veteran of many social movements from the 1960s onward, who became one of the most prolific, brilliant lights in the progressive universe, passed away. Born in the Fontana suburb of Los Angeles in 1946, his family moved to San Diego when he was young, and Mike grew up here. Born into a working-class Catholic family, Mike was transformed by the Black Civil Rights movement, his “burning bush.” After long stints as a meat-cutter and long-distance truck driver, in the 1980s, Mike moved to London, becoming a long-time editor of New Left Review, and remained active on the editorial board until his final days.

Article by

Tom Reifer

Publication date: 1 November 2022
Race, space and punishment in urban sociology Review essay: The reassertion of race, space, and punishment’s place in urban sociology and critical criminology

Shrinking Space

Structural circumstances of deprivation and criminalization facing African-Americans and the racialized perceptions of criminality appear to be some of the salient features that recently led to a young black teenager being killed by neighborhood watch patrolman George Zimmerman.

Paper by

Tom Reifer

Publication date: 29 July 2013
Secrets, Lies, & Propaganda Hollywood’s Zero Dark Thirty, America’s Liberal Culture of Torture, & the Struggle for its Abolition

After the US embrace of torture after 9/11 it was only a matter of time before Hollywood decided to make a tribute to America’s liberal culture of torture for the big screen; Zero Dark Thirty

Paper by

Tom Reifer

Publication date: 3 January 2013