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Omar Wasow

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Omar Wasow
Wasow in 2007
Born
Omar Tomas Wasow

1970 (age 53–54)
Nairobi, Kenya
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Occupations
  • Tech expert 1995-2008
  • University professor and researcher, 2009 -
Employers
Known forPolitical science, race and ethnic politics
Spouse
​
(m. 2012)​
Websitewww.omarwasow.com

Omar Tomas Wasow (born December 22, 1970)[1] is an assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science. He is co-founder of the social networking website BlackPlanet.

Life

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Wasow grew up in a multi-ethnic family. His father, Bernard, is of German Jewish heritage, and his mother, Eileen, is African-American.[2][3] Bernard was a civil rights activist who participated in the Freedom Summer Project, which entailed registering Black voters in Mississippi.[4] Wasow's paternal grandfather was the mathematician Wolfgang R. Wasow. Both Wolfgang Wasow and Omar Wasow's paternal grandmother are of German Jewish heritage.[citation needed]

Education

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Wasow is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City, where he was president of the student union. He then graduated in 1992 from Stanford University in California with a BA degree in race and ethnic relations.[5]

Wasow earned a PhD in African-American studies, an MA in government and an MA in statistics, all from Harvard University in 2012.[6][7]

Tech career

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In 1995, Wasow was proclaimed by Newsweek as one of the "fifty most influential people to watch in cyberspace."

In 1999 he created BlackPlanet, one of the first major social networking sites.[8] In 2008, the company was sold for $38 million.[9]

Academic career

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Wasow became an assistant professor of Politics at Princeton University in 2013.[10]

Wasow’s work centers on race and ethnic politics and social movements and protests.[4] His paper was published four days before the murder of George Floyd, in American Political Science Review paper[11] on violent and nonviolent civil rights protests in the 1960s. The paper was widely discussed in international media coverage of the George Floyd protests.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]

Altmetric ranked the paper in the top 1% (1,000 of 18 million papers).[22] Controversy erupted after David Shor was fired from his job at Civis Analytics, a progressive data analytics company, for tweeting a summary of Wasow’s paper.[23][24][9]

Wasow has written commentary on the George Floyd protests[25] and the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[26]

In Summer 2021, Wasow became an assistant professor of Politics at Pomona College in Claremont, California. In 2022, he left Pomona College to become an assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science.[27]

Personal life

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In 2012, Wasow married Jennifer Brea, a documentary filmmaker he met while they were both Ph.D. students at Harvard.[28] He appears in her documentary film Unrest about her experience living with myalgic encephalomyelitis which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

Wasow's sister is the filmmaker Althea Wasow,[29] married to the writer Paul Beatty.[30]

Further reading

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  • Browning, Lynnley (2001-05-13). "Silicon Alley's Philosopher-Prince". New York Times.
  • "Omar Wasow". People. 54 (20): 100. 2000-11-13.
  • "The Net 50". Newsweek. 126/127 (26/1): 42–46. 1995-12-25.

References

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  1. ^ "The Identity of Young, Black Men". Chronicle of Higher Education. 1997. Retrieved 2020-07-11.
  2. ^ Browning, Lynnley (13 May 2001). "Private Sector; Silicon Alley's Philosopher-Prince". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  3. ^ "Jennifer Bréa, Omar Wasow". The New York Times. 2012-09-02. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  4. ^ a b "Right To Vote: Civil Rights Activists Say We've Been Here Before". NPR.org. Retrieved 2021-07-14.
  5. ^ Phelan, J. Greg (1994-09-18). "Sound Bytes; Where Hipness is On-Line". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-14.
  6. ^ "About – Omar Wasow". www.omarwasow.com. Retrieved 2018-04-27.
  7. ^ "Omar Wasow Bio". Harvard University Scholar. Retrieved May 7, 2024.
  8. ^ Watts, Jenisha (March 23, 2011). "Interview: BlackPlanet's Founder Talks Myspace, Why He was Skeptical of Twitter, And If Facebook May Have Peaked". Complex. Retrieved 2018-04-27.
  9. ^ a b Bartlett, Tom (July 7, 2020). "The Protesting of a Protest Paper". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2020-07-11.
  10. ^ University, Princeton. "Display Person – Department of Politics at Princeton University". www.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2018-04-27.
  11. ^ Wasow, Omar (August 2020). "Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting". American Political Science Review. 114 (3): 638–659. doi:10.1017/S000305542000009X. ISSN 0003-0554. S2CID 219501252.
  12. ^ "How Violent Protests Change Politics". The New Yorker. 29 May 2020. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  13. ^ Douthat, Ross (2020-05-30). "Opinion | The Case Against Riots". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  14. ^ Edsall, Thomas B. (2020-06-03). "Opinion | The George Floyd Election". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  15. ^ "What the 1960s civil rights protests can teach us about fighting racism today". Science News. 2020-06-05. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  16. ^ "Will protests help Donald Trump as they did Richard Nixon in 1968?". The Economist. 2020-06-08. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  17. ^ "美学者：抗议运动对特朗普选情是利还是弊？" [American scholars: Is the protest movement good or bad for Trump's election prospects?]. m.international.caixin.com (in Chinese). Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  18. ^ Mahler, Thomas (2020-06-03). "La preuve par l'Histoire : pourquoi les violences vont (sans doute) profiter à Trump" [Proof from History: why the violence will (undoubtedly) benefit Trump]. L’Express (in French). Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  19. ^ "Riots helped elect Nixon in 1968. Can Trump benefit from fear and loathing too?". The Guardian. 2020-06-16. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  20. ^ "ZEIT". www.zeit.de (in German). Retrieved 2021-06-27.[dead link]
  21. ^ Chait, Jonathan (2020-09-17). "Trump Stoked Police Violence, and It May Have Cost Him the Election". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  22. ^ "Altmetric – Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting". cambridge.altmetric.com. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  23. ^ Chait, Jonathan (2020-06-11). "The Still-Vital Case for Liberalism in a Radical Age". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  24. ^ Yglesias, Matthew (2020-07-29). "The real stakes in the David Shor saga". Vox. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  25. ^ "Perspective | The protests started out looking like 1968. They turned into 1964". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  26. ^ "Perspective | 'This is not who we are': Actually, the Capitol riot was quintessentially American". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  27. ^ Li, Reia (11 February 2022). "Pomona politics professor Omar Wasow leaving for UC Berkeley". The Student Life. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  28. ^ "Jennifer Bréa, Omar Wasow – Weddings". The New York Times. 2012-09-02. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-12-17.
  29. ^ "Bio". eileenwasow. Retrieved 2021-06-04.
  30. ^ Millen, Robbie (October 25, 2016). "I'm not advocating segregation, I'm having fun pondering it". The Times.
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