Andrew Hacker

Andrew Hacker is an American polical scientist and public intellectual.

He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Queens College in New York. Hacker was born in 1929 and did his undergraduate work at Amherst College followed by graduate work at Oxford University, University of Michigan, and Princeton University where he received his Ph. D. degree. Hacker taught at Cornell before taking his current position at Queens.

His published work spans questions of race, class, and gender in American society. Hacker's work is interdisciplinary and reflects his education in political theory, psychology, and sociology. Summarizing this, he notes on the Simon and Schuster Website:

This approach held for a book I wrote about the realities of race in America, where the inequalities faced by one race confront the insecurities of another. In a more recent book, on wealth and income, I found that people's goals were less purely economic than quests for status and esteem. Moving from race and wealth to the sexes seemed a natural progression, since it is another of this country's abiding divides. Here, as before, I use statistics when they can enhance our understanding, and add my own analysis when the discussion needs to be taken further.

Current works in progress include a book on higher education in America in collaboration with Claudia Dreifus. Professor Hacker is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books (NYRB).

Selected Books:

1) Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (1992) Scribner

2) Money: Who Has How Much and Why (1998) Simon and Schuster

3) Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Women and Men (2003) Scribner

See also:

Professor Hacker's author page at NYRB