Background and career
Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, theologian, activist, and public intellectual. West was an independent candidate in the 2024 United States presidential election and is an outspoken voice in left-wing politics in the United States. The grandson of a Baptist minister, West's primary philosophy focuses on the roles of race, gender, and class struggle in American society. A socialist, West draws intellectual contributions from multiple traditions, including Christianity, the black church, democratic socialism, left-wing populism, neopragmatism, and transcendentalism. During his career, he has held professorships and fellowships at Harvard University, Yale University, Union Theological Seminary, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Pepperdine University, and the University of Paris in Saint-Denis. Among his most influential books are Race Matters (1993) and Democracy Matters (2004). He has been featured in several documentaries, and made appearances in Hollywood films such as The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, as well as providing commentary for both films. West has also made several spoken word and hip hop albums.
West was born on June 2, 1953, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and grew up in Sacramento, California, where he graduated from John F. Kennedy High School. His mother, Irene Rayshell (Bias), was a teacher and principal. His father, Clifton Louis West Jr., was a general contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense. His grandfather Clifton L. West Sr. was pastor of the Tulsa Metropolitan Baptist Church. Irene B. West Elementary School in Elk Grove, California, is named after his mother. As a teen, West marched in civil rights demonstrations and organized protests demanding Black studies courses at his high school, where he was the student body president. He later wrote that, in his youth, he admired "the sincere Black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party, and the livid Black theology of James Cone". In 1970, after graduation from high school, he enrolled at Harvard College and took classes taught by the philosophers Robert Nozick and Stanley Cavell. In 1973, West was graduated from Harvard magna cum laude in Near Eastern languages and civilization. He credits Harvard with exposing him to a broader range of ideas and that he was influenced by his professors as well as the Black Panther Party (BPP). West says his Christianity prevented him from joining the BPP, instead choosing to work in local breakfast, prison, and church programs. After completing his undergraduate work at Harvard, West enrolled at Princeton University, where he received a master's degree and a Ph.D. in 1980, completing a dissertation under the supervision of Raymond Geuss and Sheldon Wolin. He became the first African American to graduate from Princeton with a Ph.D. degree in philosophy. At Princeton, West was heavily influenced by the neopragmatism of Richard Rorty. Rorty remained a close friend and colleague of West's for many years following West's graduation. The title of West's dissertation was Ethics, Historicism, and the Marxist Tradition, which was later revised and published under the title The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought.
In his late 20s, he returned to Harvard as a W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow before becoming an assistant professor at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. In 1984, he went to Yale Divinity School in what eventually became a joint appointment in American studies. While at Yale, he participated in campus protests for a clerical labor union and divestment from apartheid South Africa. One of the protests resulted in his being arrested and jailed. As punishment, the university administration canceled his leave for the spring term in 1987, leading him to commute from Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was teaching two classes, across the Atlantic Ocean to the University of Paris in Saint-Denis. He then returned to Union Theological Seminary for one year before going to Princeton to become a professor of religion and director of the program in African American Studies from 1988 to 1994. After Princeton, he accepted an appointment as professor of African American studies at Harvard University, with a joint appointment at the Harvard Divinity School. West taught one of the university's most popular courses, an introductory class on African American studies. In 1998, he was appointed the first Alphonse Fletcher University Professor. West used this new position to teach in not only African American studies, but also courses in divinity, religion, and philosophy. West was also inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa in 1998 at SUNY Plattsburgh.
In 2000, economist and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers became president of Harvard. Soon after, Summers held a private meeting with West, in which he reportedly rebuked West for missing too many classes, contributing to grade inflation, neglecting serious scholarship, and spending too much time on his financially profitable projects. Summers reportedly suggested that West produce an academic book befitting his professorial position, as his recent output had consisted primarily of co-written and edited volumes. According to some reports, Summers also objected to West's production of a CD, the critically panned Sketches of My Culture, and to his political campaigning, including spending an alleged three weeks to promote Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign. West contended he had missed only one class during his time at Harvard "in order to give a keynote address at a Harvard-sponsored conference on AIDS". Summers also allegedly suggested that since West held the rank of Harvard University Professor and thus reported directly to the president, he should meet with Summers regularly to discuss the progress of his academic production. Summers refused to comment on the details of his conversation with West, except to state that he hoped that West would remain at Harvard. Soon after, West was hospitalized for prostate cancer. West noted that Summers failed to send him get-well wishes until weeks after his surgery, whereas newly installed Princeton president Shirley Tilghman had contacted him frequently before and after his treatment. In 2002, West left Harvard University to return to Princeton. West criticized Summers in public interviews, calling him "the Ariel Sharon of higher education" on the NPR program The Tavis Smiley Show. In response to these remarks, five Princeton faculty members, led by professor of molecular biology Jacques Robert Fresco, said they looked with "strong disfavor upon his characterization" of Summers and that "such an analogy carries innuendoes and implications ... that many on the Princeton faculty find highly inappropriate, indeed repugnant and intolerable". Harvard's undergraduate student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, suggested in October 2002 that the premise of the Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode "Anti-Thesis" was based on West's conflicts with Summers.
In 2002, West returned to Princeton, where he helped found the Center for African American studies in 2006. In 2012, West left Princeton and returned to the institution where he began his teaching career, Union Theological Seminary. He continued to teach occasional courses at Princeton in an emeritus capacity as the Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies. West returned to Harvard in November 2016, leaving Union Theological Seminary for a nontenured position as Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy. He was appointed jointly at the Harvard Divinity School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of African and African American Studies.
In February 2021, reports circulated that West was denied consideration for tenure at Harvard and that he had threatened to leave the university again. On March 8, 2021, West announced that he would leave Harvard and move to the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. He submitted a resignation letter to Harvard on June 30, 2021. West implied that the decision to deny him tenure was retaliation for his critical stance on Israel and the Palestinian cause. West wrote: Is Harvard a place for a free Black man like myself whose Christian faith and witness put equal value on Palestinian and Jewish babies – like all babies – and reject all occupations as immoral? On July 1, 2021, West rejoined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, holding the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair. The recipient of more than 20 honorary degrees and an American Book Award, West has written or contributed to more than twenty published books. West is a long-time member of the Democratic Socialists of America, for which he has served as honorary chair. He is also a co-founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. West is on the advisory board of the International Bridges to Justice. In 2008, he received special recognition from the World Cultural Council. West is also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and its World Policy Council, a think tank whose purpose is to expand involvement of Alpha Phi Alpha in politics and social policy to encompass international concerns. Hazel Carby compared West to W. E. B. Du Bois as a prolific African-American thinker and has been cited as "[p]erhaps the most influential contemporary recover of Du Bois". By establishing West within Du Bois's tradition of racial thought, Carby emphasized the similarities in their intellectual positions and their aesthetic presences, such as clothing. West has been widely cited in the popular press. His scholarship has been criticized as well as praised; The New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier called West's writing "sectarian, humorless, pedantic, and self-endeared". In 1997, West was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society, and in 1999, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
