Benjamin page and robert shapiro biography

American political commentator (born 1984)

For the American documentary director, see Ben Shapiro (director).

Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (born January 15, 1984) is an American conservative political commentator, media proprietor, and attorney. He writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded in 2015. Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News from 2012 until his resignation in 2016. Shapiro has also authored sixteen non-fiction books.

Early life and education

Shapiro was born on January 15, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, to a Conservative Jewish family. He is Ashkenazi Jewish. When he was 9 years old, his family began to observe Orthodox Judaism. He started playing violin at a young age and performed at the Israel Bonds Banquet in 1996 at age 12. His parents both worked in Hollywood. His mother was a TV company executive, and his father, David Shapiro, worked as a composer.

Skipping two grades (third and ninth), Shapiro went from Walter Reed Middle School in The Valley to Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles in Westside, Los Angeles, where he graduated in 2000 at age 16. He studied political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 2004 at age 20 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree, summa cum laude, and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he studied under liberal law professors Lani Guinier and Randall Kennedy. In 2007, Shapiro graduated from Harvard with a Juris Doctor, cum laude.

Shapiro is one of four children, and his parents' only son.

Career

Law

After graduating from law school,

Interests

Program Area(s): Methods; Law and Politics; International Relations; American Politics

Regional Specialization(s): United States

Subfield Specialties: American Political Development; Comparative Historical Analysis; Law and Politics; Political Parties; Public Opinion, Political Communication, and Political Participation

Biography

Professor Page's interests include public opinion and policy making, the mass media, empirical democratic theory, political economy, policy formation, the presidency, and American foreign policy. His research interests include public opinion, policy making, the mass media, and U.S. foreign policy. He is currently engaged in a large collaborative project to study Economically Successful Americans and the Common Good. More information about this project is available.

Books  

• Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China (with Tao Xie, Columbia University Press, 2010)
• Class War? What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality (with Lawrence R. Jacobs, University of Chicago Press, 2009)
• The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (with Robert Shapiro, University of Chicago Press, 1992)
• Who Deliberates? Mass Media in Modern Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1996)
• What Government Can Do: Dealing with Poverty and Inequality (with James Simmons, University of Chicago Press, 2000)

Select Publications

• "Effects of Public Opinion on Policy," (American Political Science Review)
• "What Moves Public Opinion," (American Political Science Review)

Ben Page studied history, political science, and law at Stanford and Harvard, and did post-doctoral work in economics at Harvard and MIT. He teaches political science at Northwestern University.

Page cares a lot about foreign affairs -- especially U.S. relations with China -- but he mainly specializes in American politics. His book with Robert Y. Shapiro, "The Rational Public," examined fifty years worth of polls and surveys and argued that ordinary Americans as a group have much more stable, sensible, and well-informed opinions about politics than most elites admit. His research with Martin Gilens won the authors quite a bit of attention -- and an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart -- because it showed that ordinary Americans have much less influence on government policy making than affluent individuals or organized interest groups do, especially business corporations.

If you check out the Daily Show clip, the sober-looking scholar is Gilens; Page is the relaxed one with necktie askew. Extra points for anyone who can locate the "extended" interview, in which Stewart made his best joke of the evening.

In their new book, "Democracy in America? What Has Gone Wrong and What We Dan Do About It," Page and Gilens dissect the extreme dysfunctions of American politics but then offer hope. Major reforms can be achieved through a broad, persistent social movement.

American attorney and entrepreneur (born 1942)

Robert Leslie Shapiro (born September 2, 1942) is an American attorney and entrepreneur. He is best known for being the short-term defense lawyer of Erik Menendez in 1990, and a member of the "Dream Team" of O. J. Simpson's attorneys that successfully defended him from the charges that he murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman, in 1994. He later turned to civil work and co-founded ShoeDazzle, LegalZoom, and RightCounsel.com, appearing in their television commercials.

Early life and education

Shapiro was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, to a Jewish family. He graduated from Hamilton High School in Los Angeles in 1961 and UCLA in 1965, with a B.S. in Finance. He obtained his Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School in 1968. At UCLA, he pledged the Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau with his best friend, Roger Cossack.

Legal practice and books about the law

Shapiro was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1969. He has represented famous athletes, most notably O. J. Simpson, Darryl Strawberry, José Canseco, and Vince Coleman. In 1998, he sued Strawberry over unpaid legal fees; the case was eventually settled out of court. Shapiro has also represented celebrities, his clients including Johnny Carson, Christian Brando, Linda Lovelace, F. Lee Bailey, and the Kardashian family.

In the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who murdered their parents in 1989, Shapiro arranged the surrender of Erik in 1990, who at the time of Lyle's arrest was in Israel for a tennis tournament. He later represented Erik during their first arraignment, until the defense was handed over to Leslie Abramson, who represented Erik until the brothers' conviction in 1996.

Shapiro played a crucial role in the O. J. Simpson murder case. Already associated with Simpson, on June 17, 1994, he was present at Robert Kardashian's