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 in Aeon, The Atlantic, Boston Review, The Nation, Noema, Los Angeles Review of Books, and scholarly journals.

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.

The Political Rights of Nonhuman Beings, Los Angeles Review of Books, May 2025

The Planetary Imperative: Rethinking History and International Relations Beyond the Global (with Nils Gilman), Global Perspectives, March 2025

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

Refugee Crises, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2024

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

Governing in the Planetary Age, Noema, March 2021

jblake [at] berggruen [dot] org