John Dunn

A retired IBM systems programmer, John Dunn lives in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley, not too far north of New York City. He began his professional life as an economist for the US Department of Labor, then joined IBM in 1982 after Reagan slashed the programs he helped to oversee. A self-described “conserving radical”, a decentralist and localist at heart, he learned from Bill Kaufmann that Norman Mailer described himself as “a left conservative”: John would plead guilty to the charge. His favorite thinkers and writers include Isaiah Berlin, the British philosopher and historian of ideas; R.H. Tawney, the British historian and socialist, and Wendell Berry, American regionalist. He has been told he is curmudgeonly. Smiling, he sometimes agrees.