Devid Greber

David Graeber was an American anthropologist and public activist, and an anarchist.

He was born in 1961 in New York City into a working-class family. His father, a former member of the Young Communist League of the United States, took part in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side.

In 1996, he defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago. He chose anthropology as his specialty, and his research topic was magical rituals and the problem of slavery in Madagascar. Two years later, in 1988, he became an associate professor at Yale University, where he taught until 2005. In May 2005, the university did not renew his contract, without giving clear reasons for its decision. Graeber's supporters (colleagues, former students, and activists) believed the decision was politically motivated.

From 2008 to spring 2013, he taught at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2013, he was appointed professor at the London School of Economics.

David Graeber was an activist in the anti-globalization movement. He took part in a number of protests, for example in Seattle in 1999 and in student protests in the United Kingdom in 2010. In 2011, he was a prominent participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Rolling Stone magazine attributed authorship of the famous slogan “We are the 99%” to him. Later, Graeber wrote that the slogan was a collective creation. David Graeber was also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World trade union.

He died on September 2, 2020, in Venice.