James Pearson Steyer (born 1956) is an American civil rights attorney, professor, and author. He founded Common Sense Media, an organization that "provides education and advocacy to families to promote safe technology and media for children."
Early life and education
Steyer was born in New York City in 1956. His mother, Marnie (née Fahr), was a remedial reading teacher at the Brooklyn House of Detention, and his father, Roy Henry Steyer, was a partner in the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. His father was Jewish and his mother Episcopalian. He has two brothers: Hume Steyer and Tom Steyer. Steyer was highly influenced by his mother, who would sometimes bring him to class as her teaching assistant. In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Steyer’s college friend, Mike Tollin, said "[Jim’s] whole focus on kids comes from his close relationship with his mother…She was the kind of woman who would sit you down, ask you how things were, and you felt like you needed to tell her the truth."
Steyer graduated early from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and worked with his mother teaching remedial reading at a public school in Harlem. Steyer later graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University where he was awarded the Lindsey Peters Award for Outstanding Work in American Government. After two years of community development work in Asia, he attended Stanford Law School and graduated in 1983. During law school, Steyer was part of a group that founded the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, a non-profit legal services center for low-income families in East Palo Alto, California. After Stanford, he became a law clerk for Justice Allen Broussard of the California Supreme Court. He then served as a civil rights attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. There, he helped spearhead the Poverty and Justice Program, focused on developing national legal and legislative strategies on behalf of disadvantaged African Americans.
Career
Steyer has been teaching courses as an adjunct professor at Stanford University in political science, education, civil rights and civil liberties for 35 years. He has also authored three books: The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media’s Effect on our Children in 2002, which focuses on the effects certain media and government regulators have on children, Talking Back to Facebook: The Common Sense Guide to Raising Kids in the Digital Age in 2012, and Which Side of History: How Technology Is Reshaping Democracy & Our Lives in 2021. His former students include New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and Chelsea Clinton, who he raved was such a “star student” that he hired her as a teaching assistant and research aide.
Steyer founded his first child advocacy venture, Children Now, in 1988. Children Now was one of the main lobbying groups that fought for the three-hour-a-week educational children's programming quota which eventually became law. The group also became well known for publishing a “report card” on California’s children. This report card helped to shed light on important statistics. One of the red flags the report card raised was that one-fifth of California children lacked health insurance and only half were immunized.
Shortly after starting Children Now, Steyer noticed a serious need for high-quality educational TV programs for kids. In response he started JP Kids in 1996, a for-profit company that produced such shows as The Famous Jett Jackson, which aired on the Disney Channel. Steyer served as the company’s Chairman and CEO. Under Steyer’s guidance, the company used various platforms to broadcast more educational and entertaining content. JP Kids also provided an online outlet for teens to share opinions, explore alternative points of views and discuss political and environmental topics.
Steyer was awarded Stanford's highest teaching honor, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, which is awarded annually to Stanford faculty, staff and teaching assistants, in 2010. Stanford students also voted for him to be Class Day speaker during Stanford’s graduation exercises. In 2011, the New York Times reported that Steyer was helping build the Center for the Next Generation, a nonprofit that aims to influence public policy debates focused on national children’s and energy issues.