Rankin Chapel - Sunday, April 15th - Dr. Cornel West

Dr. Cornel West
Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice
Union Theological Seminary
New York, N.Y.
Dr. Cornel West Dr. Cornel West
Cornel West is an American philosopher, scholar of African American studies, and political activist. His influential book Race Matters (1993) lamented what he saw as the spiritual impoverishment of the African American underclass and critically examined the “crisis of black leadership” in the United States.

West’s father was a civilian U.S. Air Force administrator and his mother an elementary school teacher and eventually a principal. During West’s childhood the family settled in an African American working-class neighbourhood in Sacramento, California. There, West regularly attended services at the local Baptist church, where he listened to moving testimonials of privation, struggle, and faith from parishioners whose grandparents had been slaves. Another influence on West during this time was the Black Panther Party, whose Sacramento offices were near the church he attended. The Panthers impressed upon him the importance of political activism at the local level and introduced him to the writings of Karl Marx.

In 1970, at age 17, West entered Harvard University on a scholarship. He graduated magna cum laude three years later with a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern languages and literature. He attended graduate school in philosophy at Princeton University, where he was influenced by the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. (West briefly abandoned work on his dissertation to write a novel, which was never published.) After receiving his doctoral degree in 1980, West taught philosophy, religion, and African American studies at several colleges and universities, including Union Theological Seminary, Yale University (including the Yale Divinity School), the University of Paris, Princeton University, and Harvard University, where he was appointed Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., University Professor in 1998. He returned to Princeton in 2002 as Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies.



West’s work was characteristically wide-ranging, eclectic, original, and provocative. His several books analyzing issues of race, class, and justice or tracing the history of philosophy typically combined a political perspective based on democratic socialism (see social democracy), a Christian moral sensibility, and a philosophical orientation informed by the tradition of American pragmatism. His best-known work, Race Matters, a collection of essays, was published exactly one year after the start of riots in Los Angeles that were sparked by the acquittal of four white policemen on charges of aggravated assault in the beating of Rodney King, an African American motorist. The book discussed the pervasive despair and “nihilism” of African Americans in poverty and criticized African American leaders for pursuing strategies that West believed were shortsighted, narrow-minded, or self-serving. West also considered issues such as black-Jewish relations, the renewed popularity of Malcolm X, and the significance of the Los Angeles riots themselves

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