Robert Fuller

Robert Fuller

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Robert Fuller earned his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University and taught at Columbia, where he co-authored the text Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics. He then served as president of Oberlin College, his alma mater. For a dozen years, beginning in 1978, he worked in what came to be known as "citizen diplomacy" to improve the Cold War relationship. During the 1990s, he served as board chair of the non-profit global corporation Internews, which promotes democracy via free and independent media. With the end of the Cold war and the collapse of the USSR, Fuller looked back on his career and understood that he had been, at different junctures in his life, a somebody and a nobody. His periodic sojourns into "Nobodyland" led him to identify and probe rankism-abuse of the power inherent in rank-and ultimately to write Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank (New Society Publishers, 2003). Three years later, he published a sequel focusing on building a "dignitarian" society, titled All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (Berrett-Koehler, 2006). Robert W. Fuller is co-author, with Pamela A. Gerloff, of Dignity for All: How to Create a World without Rankism (June 2008, Berrett-Koehler Publishers), a practical handbook for creating a culture of dignity at home, school, the workplace, and the world. He may be contacted at fuller@dignityforall.org.

Blog Entries by Robert Fuller

Racism and Rankism: We Won't Eradicate the One Until We Take on the Other

Posted March 20, 2008 | 02:23 PM (EST)


Americans are listening to Senator Obama on the issue of race, and recognizing something qualitatively different about what he's saying. That's because he's addressing race-based discrimination in a larger context--that of human dignity and affronts to dignity that are even broader than racism itself.

Racial discrimination is but...

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Barack Obama and the Politics of Dignity

174 Comments | Posted March 14, 2008 | 06:39 PM (EST)


Barack Obama is offering Americans dignity, and they're grabbing it with both hands. Dignity permeates his speeches, informs his policies, and is evident in his manner. Whether he intended to or not, Obama has become a herald of the politics of dignity.

But dignity for whom? For blacks and...

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Bridging Left and Right: A Foundation for Transpartisan Politics

Posted June 4, 2007 | 01:56 PM (EST)


I often think it's comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal,
That's born into the world alive,
Is either a little Liberal,
Or else a little Conservative!

-- W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe

Reading the...

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Dignity--A Unifying Value for American Politics

Posted June 15, 2006 | 04:31 PM (EST)


Both political parties know that a unifying core value expressed in a pithy slogan translates into votes. FDR's Democrats had "The New Deal"; LBJ's party advanced "The Great Society." Republicans rally to "lower taxes," "smaller government," "strong defense," and "family values."

What core value, what slogan, could move us...

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