Dag Herbjørnsrud is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 historian and journalist. He has been editor-in-chief of the Norwegian weekly left-wing periodical Ny Tid

Ny Tid

Ny Tid is Norway's only international news magazine, published in Newsweek-format every Friday. Politically, its history and editorial line is on the left side of the political spectrum and, until its recent sale, it was founded and owned by the Socialist Left Party of Norway...

since 1 February 2008.

He is the son of writer Hans Herbjørnsrud

Hans Herbjørnsrud

Hans Herbjørnsrud is a Norwegian author of short stories. His works frequently play with the differences between Norwegian languages Bokmål and Nynorsk and the various Norwegian dialects...

 and historian Anna Tranberg. In 1991–94, Dag Herbjørnsrud studied political science at the University of Oslo

University of Oslo

The University of Oslo , formerly The Royal Frederick University , is the oldest and largest university in Norway, situated in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The university was founded in 1811 and was modelled after the recently established University of Berlin...

. He graduated as cand. philol. in 2002 with an English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 thesis on the later philosophy of Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...

 titled Leaving Libertarianism: Social Ties in Robert Nozick's New Philosophy. In the thesis, Herbjørnsrud argued that Nozick left Libertarianism

Libertarianism

Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

 in his later years. In a 2005 interview with the Norwegian liberal-conservative periodical Minerva

Minerva (Norwegian periodical)

Minerva is a Norwegian liberal conservative periodical that started publishing in 1924. It was started by members of the Conservative Students' association in Oslo. In , Nils August Andresen is executive editor, Torbjørn Røe Isaksen editor on society, Kristian Meisingset on culture and Fredrik...

, Herbjørnsrud stated that Nozick advocated the welfare state

Welfare state

A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...

, and that Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. This minarchist book was the winner of the 1975 National Book Award...

is not representative for Nozick's writings.

He is a former political columnist for Al-Jazeera's English website and former journalist and commentator in the newspapers Morgenbladet

Morgenbladet

Morgenbladet is a Norwegian weekly newspaper. It was founded in 1819 by the book printer Niels Wulfsberg, and was the country's first daily newspaper. For a long time, it was also the country's biggest newspaper. It was closed down by the German Wehrmacht during World War II...

(1993-1995) and Aftenposten

Aftenposten

Aftenposten is Norway's largest newspaper. It retook this position in 2010, taking it from the tabloid Verdens Gang which had been the largest newspaper for several decades. It is based in Oslo. The morning edition, which is distributed across all of Norway, had a circulation of 250,179 in 2007...

(1995-2005).

Works

In cooperation with Stian Bromark he has written three non-fiction books in Norwegian:

• Blanke løgner, skitne sannheter (Blatant Lies, Dirty Truths) (2002)
• Frykten for Amerika (The Fear of America)
• Norge - et lite stykke verdenshistorie (Norway - A Small Piece of World History) (2005).

External links