Joel B. Pollak: Occupy Wall St. vs Throw Them All Out

Session host: Stephen K. Bannon | Session guest: Joel B. Pollak

Joel B. Pollak on this weeks Victory Sessions broadcast from Anchorage, AK.  “Occupy Wall St. vs ‘Throw Them All Out’ by Peter Schweizer with Sessions’ Host Stephen K. Bannon

Joel B. Pollak is editor-in-chief and in-house counsel at Breitbart.com. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Skokie, Illinois, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1987. He graduated with honors from Harvard College in 1999 (Social Studies and Environmental Science & Public Policy) and returned to South Africa as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar in 2000, studying and tutoring students in poor neighborhoods. He worked as a freelance journalist in Cape Town before serving as a speechwriter for Tony Leon, then-leader of the South African opposition, from 2002 to 2006.

After earning a Master of Arts in Jewish Studies from the University of Cape Town in 2006, he returned to the United States and graduated from Harvard Law School in June 2009. His first book, The Kasrils Affair: Jews and Minority Politics in South Africa (University of Cape Town Press, 2008) was a critical and commercial success. He served as a volunteer writer for the McCain campaign, and has also worked as a research assistant for Alan Dershowitz. He published his second book, Don’t Tell Me Words Don’t Matter: How Rhetoric Won the 2008 Presidential Election, in 2009. He has also worked as a Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute, focusing on human rights and the UN.

In April 2009, Joel challenged Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) about his role in the nation’s financial crisis at a forum at Harvard. The exchange was captured on television and became a YouTube and TV sensation. He ran for U.S. Congress in his hometown of Skokie, Illinois, running as a Republican in a historically Democratic area. Though he lost, he achieved the best-ever margin for a Republican in the district, raising nearly $700,000 and ending the campaign with no debt.

He recently moved to California to work with Andrew Breitbart. Joel’s wife Julia, a fellow Harvard graduate, is a national security policy researcher who serves in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an aviation structural mechanic.

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