Author Archives: Benjamin Todd Jealous

By Ben Jealous As I write this, the final few races are being called in the midterm elections that were held weeks ago. It’s clear that the House will be closely divided, with Republicans holding a very small majority. History shows that in midterm elections, the party that doesn’t hold the presidency typically gains a […]

By Ben Jealous A lot of good news came out of this month’s elections—and enough bad news to remind us that we can never let our guard down when freedom and democracy are at stake. This year, democracy itself was on the ballot, and voters made an important down payment on its future. In 2020, […]

By Ben Jealous One of the great joys of my life is teaching. I’m fortunate to teach classes on social justice at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most respected schools in the country. Penn has a longstanding commitment to affirmative action, and I have seen first-hand how diversity in the classroom benefits all […]

By Ben Jealous Some things are unthinkable—until they happen. For Jamie Raskin, a congressman and father, the first unthinkable thing was the loss of his beloved son Tommy to suicide on New Year’s Eve 2020. As a father myself, my heart breaks when I imagine the grief experienced by Raskin and his family. The second […]

By Ben Jealous Truth is a threat to authoritarianism. Reading is a path to truth. That’s why the freedom to read is essential to the freedom to learn. And that’s why the freedom to learn is often attacked by those who abuse power and those who cling to it. Every year, the American Library Association […]

By Ben Jealous A New Mexico judge has done the country a big favor.  Judge Francis Mathew upheld a little-known provision of the U.S. Constitution and removed a public official for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. I hope other judges have the courage to follow his lead.  The principle that no person is […]

By Ben Jealous We all know that what people do tells you more about them than what they say. That’s true for politicians, too.   We see politicians who call themselves “pro-life” and “pro-woman” when they’re pushing to make abortion a crime but shrug their shoulders when those laws result in greater risk of women dying […]

By Ben Jealous The truth has power. That is why an army of politicians, lawyers, political schemers, media personalities, and admirers of former President Donald Trump have tried so hard to keep Americans from learning the truth about his effort to overturn the 2022 election. Fortunately, he failed to overturn the election. And he and […]

By Ben Jealous Did you ever wonder whether elections really matter? Well, the Trump Supreme Court majority has answered that question for good. Or, more accurately, they have answered it for bad. In the term that has just ended, the new far right-wing majority on the Supreme Court went on a rampage. They have torn […]

By Ben Jealous “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”   Those are the words of Ruby Freeman, a Black woman and election worker in Georgia during the 2020 election. She and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, were falsely accused by Rudy Giuliani of rigging the election […]

by Ben Jealous The mass killings at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, 10 days after the white supremacist killings in Buffalo, New York, are further evidence of how deeply our society is broken, and how urgently we need to figure out how to begin fixing it. The slaughter of so many young children and […]