[1] His master's thesis, supervised by Randall Kennedy,[citation needed] was later published by the New York University Press as Clarence Thomas and the Tough Love Crowd: Counterfeit Heroes and Unhappy Truths, a critique of black neoconservatism.

[1] In 1994, on a Winthrop-sponsored leave, Roberts joined an international delegation of lawyers who travelled to South Africa to monitor the country's first democratic elections.

[2] He was particularly well known for publishing scathing critiques of his adversaries in the press; in a 2007 column Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee said that Roberts "tests my commitment to freedom of expression".

According to Roberts, she objected to his account of her romantic relationships, to his inclusion of disparaging remarks she had made about Doris Lessing and Ruth First, and to critical passages about her contemporary political views on the Israel–Palestine conflict and the South African AIDS crisis.

[8] In later years, the relationship between Roberts and Gordimer became the subject of Craig Higginson's play The Imagined Land,[9] the inspiration for Patrick Flanery's novel Absolution,[10] and a case study in Hermione Lee's Biography: A Very Short Introduction;[11] these and various other sources treated the dispute as emblematic both of ethical quandaries in biographical writing and of broader cultural tensions in post-apartheid South Africa.

[12][13][14] Shortly after publishing No Cold Kitchen, Roberts was approached by South African President Thabo Mbeki to write the first authorized account of his intellectual and policy agendas.

[21] Roberts' response to the judgment was published in an extensive interview in the South African Mail & Guardian, which cites a suppressed letter from Ken Owen, a previous editor of The Sunday Times, which recognised The Times′ "eagerness to smear Ronald Roberts" and repudiated the words the newspaper had attributed to him, adding: "I must say that on matters within my knowledge [its] reporting is false.