Jon Wiener

Contributing Editor

Jon Wiener teaches US history at UC Irvine. His most recent book is How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America. He sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act for its files on John Lennon. With the help of the ACLU of Southern California, Wiener v. FBI went all the way to the Supreme Court before the FBI settled in 1997. That story is told in Wiener's book, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files; some of the pages of the Lennon FBI file are posted here. The story is also told in the documentary, “The U.S. Versus John Lennon,” released in 2006. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times. It has been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish and Italian.

Wiener hosts a weekly afternoon drive-time interview show on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles His guests have included Gail Collins, Jane Mayer, Joan Didion, Gore Vidal, Barbara Ehrenreich, Frank Rich, Seymour Hersh, Amos Oz, Mike Davis, Elmore Leonard, John Dean, Julian Bond, Al Franken, and Terry Gross.

Jon Wiener was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and attended Central High School there. He has a B.A. from Princeton and a Ph.D. from Harvard, where he began working as a writer in the late sixties for the underground paper The Old Mole. He lives in Los Angeles.

Articles

The Last Lennon File (Journalists and Journalism, Music, Society)

The controversy over newly released files on John Lennon is less about Lennon than about excessive government secrecy.

Jon Wiener

America, Through a Glass Darkly (Biography, History)

An intellectual biography of Richard Hofstadter rides a wave of nostalgia for this artful historian and liberal icon of the 1950s and '60s.

Jon Wiener

Israeli Doves Challenge the War (Religion, Regions and Countries, Society)

According to the Western media, most Israelis, including leading peace
advocates, support the ongoing war in Lebanon. But Israeli doves are
beginning to speak out. Will it make a difference?

Jon Wiener

Curing Fanaticism (Regions and Countries)

Amos Oz reflects on the political and diplomatic implications of Hamas's
recent victory and its impact on opportunities for peace.

Jon Wiener

UCLA's Dirty Thirty (Movements, Education Policy, Student Movements, Society)

Negative media coverage has succeeded in undermining support among
prominent conservatives for a UCLA alumni group that paid students to
target and expose left-leaning faculty.

Jon Wiener

Remembering Eugene McCarthy (Parties, History, Politics)

Eugene McCarthy's political life was full of contradictions: A conventional
cold war liberal and fierce anti-Communist, in the Vietnam era, he was
transformed into the standard-bearer of the liberal antiwar movement, a
true hero.

Jon Wiener

Teaching 9/11 (Education Policy, Terrorism Targeting the US, Youth, Society)

How do you tell a student the story of September 11?

Jon Wiener

Tsuris Over Chutzpah

Cambridge, Mass.

Jon Wiener and Alan M. Dershowitz

Giving Chutzpah New Meaning (Regions and Countries, Media, Non-fiction, Society)

Alan Dershowitz is on the defensive over his research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jon Wiener

Israeli Boycott: A Mistake (Regions and Countries, Higher Education, Society)

The British Association of University Teachers should overturn its boycott of Israeli academics.