Stanley Aronowitz was born in 1933 and grew up in the Bronx, New York City. He attended Brooklyn College until he was suspended for leading a sit-in in the Dean’s office to protest the suppression of the radical student newspaper. After leaving school he became a steelworker and then a union organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (now UNITE) and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers.
Aronowitz received his B.A. from the New School in 1968 and became associate director of the anti-poverty organization Mobilization for Youth, where he was also a community organizer. In the early `70s he founded Park East High School in East Harlem, the first post-war experimental public high school in New York City, and taught community studies at the College of Staten Island. He has since taught at the University of California Irvine, the Center for Worker Education at City College of the City University of New York, and CUNY Graduate Center, where he is currently Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Urban Education.
Aronowitz was a New Left activist during the `60s. He was the chief New York organizer for the Independent Committee to End the War in Vietnam, an editor of the influential journal Studies on the Left, and taught at the radical Free University of New York. He is presently an elected officer of the CUNY faculty and staff union, the Professional Staff Congress.
In 1973 Aronowitz published his first book, the acclaimed False Promises: The Shaping of American Working-Class Consciousness. He has written 15 books in all. The most recent are The Last Good Job in America, essays on culture and politics; The Knowledge Factory, a critique of the corporatization of higher education; and From the Ashes of the Old, an analysis of the state of the labor movement. His book on class in America, Class Rules, will be published in 2003. He has also written about science and technology, philosophy and culture.
Aronowitz lives in Manhattan. He is married to the writer Ellen Willis, with whom he has a teenage daughter. He also has four older children.
