Biography

Short biography

Link to longer but somewhat out-of date biography

I’m a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar with a background as an economist. I specialize in distributive justice—the ethics of who has what. I write on many topics including social contract theory, freedom, equality, property rights, and sufficientarianism, but I’m best known for my work on Basic Income. I’ve published dozens of articles in fields as diverse as economics, philosophy, politics, and anthropology. I’ve published nine books, including Freedom as the Power to Say No, Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, A Critical Discussion of Basic Income Experiments, and The Prehistory of Private Property. I cofounded the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network 1999 and the academic journal Basic Income Studies in 2006. I’ve appeared on or been quoted by many media outlets including the New York Times, NBC News, 538, Vice, NPR’s On Point, NPR’s Marketplace, PRI’s the World, CNBC, Al-Jazeera, Dissent, Forbes, the Financial Times, Salon, and The Atlantic Monthly, which actually called me “a leader of the worldwide basic income movement.” My current project is a book entitled Universal Basic Income for MIT Press’s “Essential Knowledge” series.

Biographical essays & interviews

• Longer biography from 2016 (1500 words)
• A Conversation with Karl Widerquist (video). By Ching Juhl (host). Juhl Media, YouTube, June 22, 2020 (Video)
• The Fall and Rise of the Basic Income Movement: My personal reflections after following it for 40 years. By Karl Widerquist, the Indepentarian (blog), Basic Income News, February 7, 2020 (Text)
• My own private basic income (Text), by Karl Widerquist, OpenDemocracy, June 2, 2017 and My own private basic income (audio)

Audio-Video

YouTube channel playlist of videos on my biography