Michael D. Rectenwald is an American author and former professor. He has written about 19th-century British secularism and is a critic of the contemporary social justice movement. As of 2024, he is a member of the Mises Caucus of the US Libertarian Party.[1]
Michael Rectenwald
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Rectenwald at the 2024 Libertarian National Convention
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| Occupations |
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| Political party | Libertarian |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Pittsburgh (BA) Case Western Reserve University (MA) Carnegie Mellon University (PhD) |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions |
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| Main interests | Secularism |
Rectenwald's 2018 memoir states that he is the seventh of nine children.[2]
Rectenwald's undergraduate studies in English included an apprenticeship with Beat Generation poet Allen GinsbergatNaropa University (formerly Naropa Institute) during the 1979–80 school year.[3][better source needed] He graduated cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 1983 with a B.A. in English literature. In 1997, Rectenwald received a master's degree in English literature from Case Western Reserve University.[4] In 2004, Carnegie Mellon University conferred upon Rectenwald a Ph.D. in literary and cultural studies. In the span of one year, he published three books.[5]
Rectenwald was a Professor of Liberal and Global Liberal Studies at New York University for more than ten years before retiring in January 2019.[6]
On September 12, 2016, Rectenwald created the anonymous Twitter account @antipcnyuprof, tweeting on the topic of social justice ideology on North American colleges and universities. A student reporter for the Washington Square News, New York University's weekly student newspaper, discovered him; he subsequently gave an interview revealing himself as the faculty member behind the account. At the time, he described his politics as “left-communist.”[7]
In a November 3, 2016 Washington Post op-ed, Rectenwald claimed that two days after the student interview, he was summoned by NYU Liberal Studies Dean Fred Schwarzbach and was "strongly encouraged to take a paid leave of absence."[8] Schwarzbach denied Rectenwald's claims and posted all email correspondence between the two from November 1 through November 11, which showed Rectenwald requesting the leave himself.[9] Rectenwald went on paid leave in September 2016. In January 2018, he sued NYU and four of its professors for defamation. The case was dismissed with prejudice against Rectenwald.[10] In October 2018, Rectenwald invited Milo Yiannopoulos to speak in one of his classes. Yiannopoulos's visit was postponed for reasons of safety.[6]
Rectenwald has written on the origins of the movement called secularism, which was founded in London in 1851 by George Jacob Holyoake.[11] In "Secularism and the cultures of nineteenth-century scientific naturalism," Rectenwald argued that Holyoake's secularism "represents an important early stage of scientific naturalism".[12] In Holyoake's Secularism, Rectenwald locates a precursor for Charles Taylor’s version of secularity as the immanent frame that structures the conditions of belief and unbelief in modernity.[13] According to a review in Victorian Studies, "Rectenwald thus offers a revisionist interpretation that, rather than understanding Holyoake's leadership of the free thought movement as a failed rhetorical attempt to make society more secular, sees it as marking a distinct moment in modernity."[14]
In 2018, the conservative New English Review Press published Rectenwald's memoir, Springtime for Snowflakes: Social Justice and Its Postmodern Parentage. In the memoir, Rectenwald critiques the contemporary social justice culture in academia, arguing that it has promoted an authoritarian and dogmatic culture in parts of academia.[15][16]
In 2023, Rectenwald filed to run for president of the United States seeking the Libertarian presidential nomination in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.[17] He finished second in delegate votes during the 2024 Libertarian National Convention, losing to Chase Oliver in the sixth round of elimination voting.[1]