Sam Gindin is a Canadian intellectual and activist known for his expertise on the labour movement and the economics of the automobile industry. Gindin's writings have focused on the Canadian Auto Workers, the auto industry, the crisis in organized labour in Canada and the US, and the political economy of capitalism. In 2012, he published The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, co-written with his lifelong friend Leo Panitch, which traces the development of American-led globalization over more than a century. In 2013, it was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize in the UK for best and most creative work in or about the Marxist tradition, and in 2014, it won the Rik Davidson/SPE Book Prize for the best book in political economy by a Canadian. He is also co-author with Leo Panitch and Steve Maher of The Socialist Challenge Today.The CAW-Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Toronto Metropolitan University is the first union-endowed chair at a Canadian university. Its mandate is to "create a hub of interaction between social justice activists and academics at Ryerson University". Source: Wikipedia (en)