Stephen Karetzky

Background

Stephen Karetzky was born on August 29, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of Harry, a commissioner for labor relations, and Lillian, a homemaker, Karetzky.

Education

Stephen Karetzky attended the Queens College of the City University of New York. There he got a Bachelor of Arts in 1967. Then, he studied at Columbia University, where he received a Master of Legal Studies in 1969 and a Doctor of Liberal Studies in 1978. Also, Stephen graduated from the California State University-Dominguez Hills and got there a Master of Arts in 1991.

Career

After graduation, Stephen Karetzky started to work at the Brooklyn Public Library in Brooklyn as a librarian in 1969. Then he became an assistant professor of library and information studies at the State University of New York-Buffalo in 1974 and the State University of New York-College at Geneseo in 1977-1978. After it, he served as an associate professor of library and information studies at Haifa University, Israel, for about two years. Then Stephen Karetzky went back to the United States and started to work as a senior editor at the Shapolsky/Steimatzky Publishers. From 1982 to 1985, he was an associate professor of library and information studies at the San Jose State University in San Jose. Besides, Stephen held the position of a senior editor in 1985-1986 at the Shapolsky Publishers in New York. In 1985-1986 he served as an executive director at the Americans for a Safe Israel. Currently, from 1986, Stephen is an associate professor of library and information studies and director of the library at the Felician College in Lodi.

In addition to teaching, Stephen Karetzky is a writer. He writes articles and reviews to periodicals, including Catholic Library World, Midstream, New Jersey Libraries, and College and Research Libraries News. Also, for today, he is the author of Reading Research and Librarianship, which describes the attempt by earnest scholars to transform librarianship into a social science during the turbulent 1930s. Living in Israel for three years led directly to Stephen's next book, The Cannons of Journalism. That book describes Western journalists' work. The Media's War against Israel includes an introduction by Jack Kemp, essays by Norman Podhoretz, Edward Alexander, and others, as well as the text of The Cannons of Journalism. Three years later, there was yet again a need to describe the misreporting in that region, so The Media's Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict appeared. The most comprehensive of the three works, it includes not only Stephen's original Cannons essay, but contributions from Irving Kristol, Ruth R. Wisse, and Jeane Kirkpatrick. Not Seeing Red, describes how American librarians and educators, as well as those in Great Britain, responded to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from its inception through its fall. Also treated in this book is a critique of how today's historians view the subject area. It reveals that the leaders of a profession ostensibly devoted to democratic principles failed to criticize the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and communism while energetically opposing those who did.

Achievements

• Stephen Karetzky is well known as an educator and writer. He taught in the United States and Israel.
  
  Stephen's first book, Reading Research, and Librarianship were accorded an honorable mention by the American Society for Information Science in its Best Book of the Year competition, the only time ever done in the history of this award. Besides, the Israeli Foreign Office purchased two dozen copies of his other book, The Cannons of Journalism, slim paperback and made it required reading for its officials and staff members.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Not Seeing Red

    (In Not Seeing Red, Stephen Karetzky examines American lib...)

    2002
  • Reading Research and Librarianship 1982
  • Cannons of Journalism 1984
  • The Media's War Against Israel 1985
  • The Media's Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1989

Politics

Stephen Karetzky is a populist and adherent conservative views.

Views

While living in Israel, Stephen Karetzky found that Western journalists were doing a poor job of covering events in the region, and it became more egregious after his return to the United States. Stephen considered that the American people could not make wise decisions concerning their government's foreign policies even if they were getting their information from those newspapers widely touted as the best. The ignorance, sloth, and bias in the journalism profession appalled him, so he decided to document this using the New York Times as my example.

Quotations: "My books have been on a wide variety of subjects, but they united by a common concern: how can democratic countries maintain their free societies by successfully countering aggressive totalitarian nations and by opposing domestic utopian zealots bent on transmogrifying them?"

Membership

• 

  American Historical Association , United States

• 

  Authors Guild , United States

• 

  Organization of American Historians , United States

• Historians of American Communism , United States

• 

  American Society for Information Science and Technology , United States

• 

  Association for Library and Information Science Education , United States

• 

  National Association of Scholars , United States

Interests

• сollecting books

Connections

Stephen Karetzky's first marriage was with Deborah Ann Shaw. They married in April 1970 and divorced in July 1972. Then, Stephen was married to Joanne Ballestrasse on March 17, 1985.

Father:

Harry Karetzky

Mother:

Lillian Karetzky

Lillian Karetzky's maiden name was Abrams.

ex-wife:

Deborah Ann Shaw

Deborah Ann Shaw was Stephen Karetzky's first wife. They divorced in 1972.

Wife:

Joanne Ballestrasse

Joanne Ballestrasse is Stephen Karetzky's second wife.