Cornel Ronald West, American children’s philosopher and political activist, was born on June 2, 1953, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
As a young man, West participated in civil rights marches and led protests calling for black education at his high school, where he was student body president.
In a later essay, he claimed that as a young man he had been inspired by “the righteous black activism of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party, and the angry black theology of James Cone.”
After graduating from high school in 1970, he enrolled at Harvard College, where he studied philosophy with Stanley Cavell and Robert Nozick.
West graduated magna cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard in 1973. He credits his exposure to a broader range of viewpoints at Harvard, which was influenced both by its academics and by the Black Panther Party.
West claims he was unable to join the BPP because of his Christianity, choosing instead to serve in neighborhood, prison and church breakfast programs.
After completing his undergraduate studies at Harvard, West enrolled at Princeton University, where he received a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in 1980.
He completed his dissertation under the supervision of Raymond Geuss and Sheldon Wolin and made history by becoming the first African American to receive a degree at Princeton.
Career of Cornel West
West is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, actor and intellectual.
West, the grandson of a Baptist minister, is interested in how race, gender and class operate in American culture and how people react and respond to their “radical conditioning.”
Marxism, neopragmatism, transcendentalism, the Black Church, Christianity, and the Black Church are just some of the philosophical traditions from which the socialist West draws inspiration.
His most important works include Race Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004). West is an important voice in American left-wing politics.
Throughout his career, he held faculty and fellow positions at universities including Harvard, Yale, Union Theological Seminary, Princeton, Dartmouth College, Pepperdine University, and the University of Paris.
He also speaks frequently on political and social issues in various media outlets. Smiley and West was a radio show co-hosted by Tavis Smiley and West from 2010 to 2013.
In addition to his appearances in various documentaries, he has also provided commentary for two Hollywood productions, The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded.
Additionally, West has released a number of spoken word and hip hop CDs. For his efforts, he was named MTV’s Entertainer of the Week.
West co-hosts The Tight Rope podcast with Tricia Rose. He often discusses with his friend Robert P. George, a well-known conservative philosopher, the value of a liberal arts education, free speech, and respectful discourse in colleges and universities.
He was ranked the fourth greatest thinker of the COVID-19 era by Prospect magazine in 2020.
Does Cornel West have children?
Cornel West has two children; Dilan Zeytun West and Clinton West. At the moment we don’t have many details on this.