Steve Ellner

Steve Ellner
Steve Ellner, July 2011
Born	(1946-12-21) December 21, 1946 (age 70) New York City
Occupation	Professor, historian

Steve Ellner (born December 21, 1946) has taught economic history and political science at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela since 1977. He is the author of numerous books and journal articles on Venezuelan history and politics, specifically in the area of political parties and organized labor. In addition, Ellner was a frequent contributor to Commonweal magazine beginning in the 1980s and more recently In These Times and NACLA Report on the Americas and has written op-ed articles in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He frequently lectures on Venezuelan and Latin American political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Ellner was born in New York City where his paternal grandfather and grandmother arrived from Austria and Finland respectively. His grandfather, Joseph Ellner, was a writer and editor of The Gipsy Patteran. In 1954, Ellner’s family moved to Connecticut.

Throughout his university education, Ellner majored in Latin American history. He received his BA at Goddard College in Vermont, his MA at Southern Connecticut State University and his PhD at the University of New Mexico, where his advisor was the prominent historian Edwin Lieuwen. In the 1960s, Ellner actively participated in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later the American Independent Movement (AIM) in New Haven, Connecticut and the United Farm Workers boycott committee in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Ellner is married to Carmen Hercilia Sánchez and has two children.

In addition to being a full-time professor at the UDO, Ellner has been a visiting professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (1994-2001), St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY (2001), Georgetown University (2004), Duke University (2005), Universidad de Buenos Aires (2010), the Australian National University (2013) and Tulane University (2015), and has taught at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University (2011) and Johns Hopkins University (2012).