Jerry Farber

Who is Jerry Farber?

Jerry Farber is an American educator and writer. Long a professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, Farber now teaches in the English Department at the University of San Diego. He is widely known as the author of a 1967 anti-establishment essay, "The Student as N*gger," in which he likened the student–professor relationship in American universities to that of slave and master. This piece, based on his experience as a teacher and as an often-arrested activist in the civil rights movement, served as the title essay of his first book. Subsequent books were The University of Tomorrowland and A Field Guide to the Aesthetic Experience. Since then he has published essays that include "Learning How to Teach: A Progress Report," "The Third Circle: On Education and Distance Learning," "Aesthetic Subjectivity and the Teaching of Literature," and "What Is Literature? What Is Art? Integrating Essence and History." Farber’s short story “Gorman,” which appeared in his first book, was included in The Year’s Best Science Fiction No. 4, edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison.