James Weinstein (July 17, 1926 – June 16, 2005) was an American historian and editor best known as the founder and publisher of In These Times, a progressive magazine started in 1976 in Chicago.
[1] As a member of the Communist Party, Weinstein made the acquaintance of Julius Rosenberg and was heavily surveilled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose file on him ran over 2,000 pages in length.
[1] In 1966, Weinstein ran for the United States House of Representatives from New York's 19th congressional district as an independent socialist candidate, advocating an immediate end to American involvement in the Vietnam War, but he lost, receiving 3.8% of the vote.
[1] Weinstein lived and worked in San Francisco, Madison, Wisconsin, and Coventry, England, teaching at the University of Warwick's Centre for the Study of Social History, before becoming a central figure among left-wing Democrats in his adopted home of Chicago, where he founded In These Times in 1976.
[1] He was inspired by Civil Rights icon Julian Bond, and intellectuals Noam Chomsky and Herbert Marcuse, both teaching at the University of Chicago at the time.