Bruce Robbins (academic)

Robbins has also focused on the subjects of internationalism and cosmopolitanism. This work has resulted in a trilogy of books including Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress, Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence, and The Beneficiary. The latter was published in 2020 and was reviewed as succeeding "brilliantly in focusing its readers on the urgencies of our time". One review states that "Robbins uncovers a hidden tradition of economic cosmopolitanism".

Robbins's involvement with the Israeli and Palestinian politics has also resulted in two documentary films. “Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists” was released in 2012, and "What Kind of Jew Is Shlomo Sand?" was released in 2020.

Although Robbins had been co-editor of the journal Social Text in 1996, when it was hoaxed by the physicist Alan Sokal, Robbins collaborated with Sokal in 2002 on a project titled An Open Letter of American Jews to our Government, which protested American support for Israel. The Open Letter was published in The New York Times.

Robbins published his second book, Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture in 1993. The book makes a case in favor of professionalism, which was not a popular argument in the midst of the Culture Wars of the 1990s. According to Publishers Weekly, Robbins "offers an original defense of academic cultural criticism as practiced today" and contended that "university-based intellectuals can contribute valuable critical insight and political awareness to a likewise professionalized public".

Robbins worked as co-editor of the journal Social Text from 1991 till 2000 and is editor-in-chief of the online journal politicsslashletters.org.

Robbins published his first book, The Servant’s Hand: English Fiction from Below in 1986. The book discusses regarding the presence of servants in the margins of novels that are not written for or about them. A review by Keith Embley stated that "The Servant's Hand attempts to extract the political sub-text of its chosen literary material". Gerald C. Sorensen described the book as a "narrative that offers us a way of seeing", and that "in these margins of the nineteenth century realist novel something of importance is inscribed".

Robbins started as an assistant of Modern English Literature at University of Geneva and then taught at University of Lausanne from 1981 till 1984 as a maître-assistant in American Literature. In 1984, he joined Rutgers University as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor and to Professor in 1987 and 1992, respectively. He was promoted to Professor II in 2000. In 2001, Robbins joined the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Robbins graduated in History and Literature from Harvard College in 1971. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University in 1976 and 1980, respectively.