Jonathan S. Blake

I am a writer, political scientist, and Director of the Planetary Program at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

I’m the co-author, with Nils Gilman, of Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises (2024) and author of Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland (2019). I previously held research positions at the RAND Corporation, Columbia Global Policy Initiative, and the Chumir Foundation. My writing on planetary politics, governance, ethnic conflict, migration, and more have appeared scholarly journals, policy reports, art catalogs, and magazines, including Aeon, The Atlantic, Boston Review, The Nation, Noema, and Los Angeles Review of Books.

I hold a B.A. in political science from UC Berkeley and a M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Books

Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises, with Nils Gilman (Stanford University Press, 2024; in paperback 2026).

Contentious Rituals: Parading the Nation in Northern Ireland, (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Writing

Nice to Wave [on the Earth Flag], in Whole Earth Redux: New Perspectives on the Whole Earth Legacy (Gray Area, 2026).

International Atomic Energy Agency: A Model for Proto-Planetary Governance, with Nils Gilman, Planetary Compendium, 2025.

Listening to the Nonhuman World, Part 2: On Strategies for Saving the Biosphere, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2025.

Listening to the Nonhuman World, Part 1: On Including Other Life-Forms in Politics, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2025.

L.A. Can Lean on Other Cities to Prevent Fires, Not Just to Fight Them, with Joe Mathews, Los Angeles Times, 2025.

The Unlovely Forests of Los Angeles, in Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis (Yale, 2024).

It's Oil That Makes LA Boil, Noema, 2024.

Governing for the Planet, with Nils Gilman, Aeon, 2024.

Is the State Here to Stay?, Boston Review, 2024.

A Messiah Won't Save Us, Noema, 2022.

Governing in the Planetary Age, with Nils Gilman, Noema, 2021.

‘We Are Almost Dead’: The Politics of Migrants and Refugees in an Unequal World, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018.

jblake [at] berggruen [dot] org