Jerry Farber (born 1935) is an American educator and writer.After
several years in the English Department at L.A. State College (now Cal
State University, L.A.http://www.calstatela.edu/), Farber became a
professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State
University, Farber taught subsequently for seven years 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 Nigger," 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 "The Third Circle: On Education and Distance Learning," "What
Is Literature? What Is Art? Integrating Essence and History," "Toward
a Theoretical Framework for the Study of Humor in Literature and the
Other Arts," "Teaching and Presence," and "On Not Betraying Poetry."
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.As a child, Farber was a radio actor
and also appeared as Fleance in Orson Welles’s film version of
Macbeth. A member of the 500 Club, made up of child actors who had
each appeared in over 500 radio shows, Farber initiated the role of
Stevie Kent, president of the Beverly Hills Beavers, on The Jack Benny
Program. Among the other radio shows on which he appeared were The
Great Gildersleeve, Lux Radio Theatre, The Screen Guild Theatre, The
Mercury Theatre on the Air, and Suspense. In addition, he performed in
a number of radio adaptations of literary worksâ€"appearing as David
Copperfield on Favorite Story, as Huckleberry Finn on NBC University
Theater, and as Oliver Twist, together with Basil Rathbone as Fagin,
on Stars Over Hollywood. He played Twist again, with Rathbone, on a
Columbia Records album.In the civil rights movement, Farber was a
member of the Non-Violent Action Committee (N-VAC), which was formed
as a more militant alternative to the Congress of Racial Equality, and
which was active in fighting job discrimination in Los Angeles. He was
arrested seven times during this period, serving a number of jail
sentences, and was arrested on one further occasion for participating
in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration against The Dow Chemical Co.,
which supplied napalm to the U.S. military. He was present as an
observer for N-VAC throughout the Watts Rebellion (often referred to
as the Watts Riots) in 1965. His account of this event was first
published in the L.A. Free Press and has since been reprinted in
Reporting Civil Rights, published by the Library of America. Jerry Farber Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter