John Gerassi

John Gerassi (July 12, 1931 – July 26, 2012), also known as Tito Gerassi or mononymously Tito, was a French-American professor, journalist, author, scholar, political activist, and revolutionary. Initially working as a journalist for Time magazine and later a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, he grew close to Che Guevara and Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution and analyzed the American policy against Latin America in his 1965 book The Great Fear in Latin America. In 1966, Tito would investigate the Boise homosexuality scandal in The Boys of Boise, exposing the persecution of homosexuals in the city that was carried out under the guise of a moral panic. Tito also used his close ties to figures to construct biographies, creating the only authorized biography of Sartre, Hated Conscience of His Century in 1989.

Tito also spent his life as an educator, teaching at institutions including San Francisco State University, The University of Paris (XII, Vincennes), the JFK Institute of the Free University of Berlin, UC Irvine, and Bard College. At the time of his death, he was the senior professor of Political Science at Queens College, City University of New York, where he had been teaching since 1978.

Biography Early life and background

John Gerassi was born in Paris on July 12, 1931, at the Clinique Tarnier to father Fernando Gerassi , a Turkish-born artist of Sephardic Jewish heritage, and Ukrainian-born mother Stépha Gerassi (; ), a writer and feminist and daughter of Klymentyna Avdykovych, a famous Lviv candy factory owner. He died at the age of 81 from cancer in the hospice care unit at the Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in New York City at 11:30 pm on July 26, 2012, watched over by two of his students. He died half an hour after the anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks, led by Gerassi's acquaintance Fidel Castro, an event which signaled the start of the Cuban Revolution. Gerassi was survived by two daughters. At the time of his death, he was the senior professor of Political Science at Queens College, City University of New York, where he had been teaching since 1978.