Michael Rectenwald

Rectenwald has written on the origins of the movement called secularism, which was founded in London in 1851 by George Jacob Holyoake.

In "Secularism and the cultures of nineteenth-century scientific naturalism," Rectenwald argued that Holyoake's secularism "represents an important early stage of scientific naturalism".

In Holyoake's Secularism, Rectenwald locates a precursor for Charles Taylor’s version of secularity as the immanent frame that structures the conditions of belief and unbelief in modernity.

According to a review in Victorian Studies, "Rectenwald thus offers a revisionist interpretation that, rather than understanding Holyoake's leadership of the free thought movement as a failed rhetorical attempt to make society more secular, sees it as marking a distinct moment in modernity."

Michael D. Rectenwald (born January 29, 1959) is an American author and former professor.

Rectenwald is a 1977 graduate of North Catholic High School in the Troy Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

His undergraduate studies in English included an apprenticeship with Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University (formerly Naropa Institute) during the 1979–80 school year.

He graduated cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 1983 with a B.A. in English literature.

In 1997, Case Western Reserve University awarded Rectenwald a master's degree in English literature.

In 2004, Carnegie Mellon University conferred upon Rectenwald a Ph.D. in literary and cultural studies.

In the span of one year, he published three books.

On September 12, 2016, Rectenwald created the anonymous Twitter account @antipcnyuprof, tweeting criticisms of what he saw as excesses of political correctness and social justice ideology on North American colleges and universities.

A student reporter for the Washington Square News, New York University's weekly student newspaper, discovered him; he subsequently gave an interview revealing himself as the faculty member behind the account.

In a November 3, 2016 Washington Post op-ed, Rectenwald claimed that two days after the student interview, he was summoned by NYU Liberal Studies Dean Fred Schwarzbach and was "strongly encouraged to take a paid leave of absence."

Schwarzbach denied Rectenwald's claims and posted all email correspondence between the two from November 1 through November 11, which showed Rectenwald requesting the leave himself.

Rectenwald went on paid leave in September 2016.

Rectenwald's 2018 memoir states that he is the seventh of nine children.

In January 2018, he sued NYU and four of its professors for defamation "after they sent accurate emails accusing him of behavior including sexism, bullying, drug use, abusing his position as chair of a hiring committee, and physical and sexual harassment".

The case was dismissed with prejudice against Rectenwald.

In October 2018, Rectenwald invited Milo Yiannopoulos to speak in one of his classes.

Yiannopoulos's visit was postponed for reasons of safety.

In 2018, the conservative New English Review Press published Rectenwald's memoir, Springtime for Snowflakes: Social Justice and Its Postmodern Parentage.

In the memoir, Rectenwald critiques the contemporary social justice culture in academia, arguing that it has promoted an authoritarian and dogmatic culture in parts of academia.

In 2023, Rectenwald filed to run for president of the United States seeking the Libertarian presidential nomination in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Although he has written about 19th-century British secularism, he may be most known as a critic of the contemporary social justice movement.

Rectenwald was a Professor of Liberal and Global Liberal Studies at New York University for more than ten years before retiring in January 2019.