David Rolfe Graeber was an influential American anthropologist, anarchist activist, and author. His seminal contributions to economic anthropology and his role as a prominent thinker on the left are evidenced in his highly-regarded works such as Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and posthumously published The Dawn of Everything (2021).

Graeber's early years were rooted in New York where he was born to a working-class Jewish family. He pursued his education at Purchase College and the University of Chicago, where he completed his doctorate in 1996 after conducting research in Madagascar. He joined Yale University as an assistant professor in 1998 but found himself at the center of a controversial non-renewal of his contract before tenure eligibility in 2005. This led to what he termed an "academic exile" in England, where he continued his career at Goldsmiths' College from 2008 to 2013, and later as a professor at the London School of Economics starting in 2013.

Throughout his career, Graeber delved into various aspects of anthropology, including theories of value, social hierarchy, and political power. His critiques of bureaucracy and managerialism in contemporary capitalism garnered attention, particularly with the concept of bullshit jobs, a term he coined in a 2013 essay. Graeber's activism spanned multiple causes, including the global justice movement, Occupy Wall Street, for which he is credited with creating the slogan "We are the 99%", support for the Rojava revolution, the British Labour Party, and Extinction Rebellion.

Graeber passed away unexpectedly while on vacation in Venice in September 2020. The legacy of his intellectual contributions and his commitment to social change continue to inspire discussions and activism around the world.