Background

Cornel Ronald West was born on June 2, 1953, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. His mother, Irene (Bias), taught in elementary school and his father, Clifton Louis West Jr., worked as a civilian administrator for the United States Air Force.

Education

West grew up in Sacramento, California, where he graduated from John F. Kennedy High School.

In 1970, West started attending Harvard University. Just three years later, he graduated magna cum laude with a major in Near Eastern languages and civilization. West then enrolled at Princeton University. By 1980, he had earned both a master's degree and a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton.

Career

West began his working career as a lecturer. The schools he first taught at include Harvard, New York City's Union Theological Seminary, the University of Paris, and Yale University's Divinity School. West accepted a religion professorship at Princeton University in 1988. Following a six-year stint at Princeton, he chose to become a professor of African American studies at Harvard. A 2001 blow-up with Harvard's then-president, Lawrence H. Summers, ended with West decamping to Princeton. In 2011, West opted to return to Union Theological Seminary.

In 1982, West's Prophesy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity was published. During the rest of the 1980s and early '90s, West brought out more books that touched on philosophy and religion, such as Prophetic Fragments: Illuminations of the Crisis in American Religion and Culture (1988) and The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (1991).

West's writing also addressed racial and sociopolitical phenomena. The essays in the best-selling Race Matters (1993) focused on the plight of struggling African Americans. West's major written works have since included The Future of the Race (1997), written with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Democracy Matters (2004), and a memoir entitled Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud (2009).

West is a frequent guest on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. He made his film debut in the Matrix - and was the commentator (with Ken Wilbur) on the official trilogy released in 2004. He also has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films including Examined Life, Call & Response, Sidewalk and Stand.

He has produced three spoken word albums including Never Forget, collaborating with Prince, Jill Scott, Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, KRS-One, and the late Gerald Levert. His spoken word interludes are featured on productions by Terence Blanchard, The Cornel West Theory, Raheem DeVaughn, and Bootsy Collins.

Achievements

• Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He was a Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris.
  
  He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought

    (Esteemed American philosopher, Cornel West tackles the et...)

    1991
  • Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism

    (In his major bestseller, Race Matters, philosopher Cornel...)

    2004
  • Black Prophetic Fire

    (An unflinching look at nineteenth- and twentieth-century ...)

    2014
  • Race Matters, 25th Anniversary: With a New Introduction

    (Race Matters became a national bestseller that has gone o...)

    1993
  • Hope on a Tightrope 2008

Religion

West has, in the past, described himself as a revolutionary Christian in the Tolstoyan mode, one who wrestles with his faith on a daily basis.

Politics

West's impassioned and insightful writings make a resounding appeal for cross-cultural tolerance and unity while urging individuals to recognize the power of diversity within a society. As a member of the editorial collective for the journal Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, West draws on his research to relate Marxist thought to cultural politics of difference, including differences in race, gender, sexual orientation, and age. And out of a desire to contribute to the building of coalitions across different communities, he writes a column for the progressive Jewish journal Tikkun. Finally, in an effort to reach out to still wider audiences, West provides commentary on contemporary subjects for popular journals, such as his essay on the 1992 Los Angeles riots for the New York Times Magazine.

West continues his exploration of race relations and cultural diversity in his 1993 book Race Matters, which his publisher, Beacon Press, promotes as a "healing vision for the crisis of racial politics today." Appealing to a "broader audience" than some of his earlier works, West's message "remains... uncompromising and unconventional," according to Ellis Cose in Newsweek. "He sees salvation in a renewal of love, empathy and compassion, in a radical redistribution of power and wealth - and in facing difficult truths."

As Boynton indicated, West's inimitable drive to keep on teaching and writing is so strong that West feels as though if he were to stop, he would "just explode." Resolute in his belief that people of color must struggle now for a better future, he persists in his quest to create an effective, black, progressive leadership. West ends his introduction to Ethical Dimensions with a call to action: "The future of U.S. progressive politics lies in the capacity of a collective leadership to energize, mobilize, and organize working and poor people. Democratic socialists can play a crucial role in projecting an all-embracing moral vision of freedom, justice, and equality, and making social analyses that connect and link activists together... America's massive social breakdown requires that we come together - for the sake of our lives, our children, and our sacred honor."

West called Obama "the black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs." And then he said he wanted to "slap him," as the article put it, "on the side of his head."

He put his support behind Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign.

Views

In an age of scholarly specialization, West cultivated widely diverse interests. His nimble mind danced from one subject to another with dazzling virtuosity. On one side of his thought, he was a social philosopher, drawing much from the Marxist tradition but uninhibited by allegiance to any Marxist orthodoxies. His scholarship was closely related to active involvement in movements for social and racial justice. He was simultaneously an interpreter of African American experience to white Americans, of American philosophy to Europeans, of democratic beliefs to South Africans, of religious insights to secularists, and of secular themes to the religious. As a philosopher, he showed special interest in pragmatism, Post-Modern thought, and the philosophy of religion. His artistic interests included literature (he had published one short story and friends predicted that he would write a novel), opera (he was seen occasionally at Salzburg), cinema (he was a fellow at the British Film Institute), and architecture (he lectured at the School of Architecture at Milan, Italy).

The unifying center for these diverse interests was a concern for cultural criticism: intellectual, esthetic, ethical, and religious. Whatever area of human interest he entered, from the arts to the most technical philosophy, he soon related to its expressions in contemporary society and its meaning for human self-understanding and justice. West appreciated culture as an expression of human creativity; he also saw that culture often oppresses human beings, especially marginalized people. He united intellectual analysis and social involvement, scholarship and action, the academic world and political life.

Quotations: "We have to recognize that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence."

"Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public."

"You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people."

"I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope."

"Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature."

"I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it."

"You must let suffering speak, if you want to hear the truth."

Personality

One of West's most defining characteristics is a near-total lack of interest in his own psychological archaeology. "I've never taken the time to focus on the inner dynamics of the dark precincts of my soul. Like Saint Augustine once said, I'm a mystery to myself," West wrote in his autobiography, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. Even when pressed, he refuses to engage in self-analysis, protesting that 21st-century confessional narcissism isn't his thing.

Physical Characteristics: West was diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer in 2000 and had to undergo surgery for the same.

Quotes from others about the person

• Henry Louis Gates Jr.: "Like a great jazz musician, he has different styles. He is multi-vocal. He has different forms that are appropriate for different occasions and different audiences. That's a sign of genius."

Interests

• Reading

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Kierkegaard, Kafka

• Politicians

  Bernie Sanders

• Writers

  Amiri Baraka, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dante Alighieri, Thomas Pynchon, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov

• Artists

  George Clinton

• Sport & Clubs

  Baseball

• Music & Bands

  Stephen Sondheim, James Cleveland, Aretha Franklin, Marion Williams, Curtis Mayfield - The Main Ingredient, The Whispers, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross

Connections

Cornel West has been married four times - to Hilda Holloman, Ramona Santiago, Elleni Gebre Amlak, and Leslie Kotkin. He has one son Clifton West from his first wife and daughter Dilan Zeytun West, born in 2000, from his fourth wife.

Father:

Clifton Louis West Jr.

Mother:

Irene West

ex-spouse:

Hilda Holloman

(married 1977)

ex-spouse:

Ramona Santiago

(married 1981; divorced circa 1986)

ex-spouse:

Elleni Gebre Amlak

​(married 1992)​

ex-spouse:

Leslie Kotkin

​(married 2016⁠; divorced 2018)​

Son:

Clifton West

Daughter:

Dilan Zeytun West

(born 2000)

Doctoral student:

Leah Hunt-Hendrix

Leah Hunt-Hendrix is an activist, political theorist, and movement builder, who writes and speaks about the new economy, solidarity, and funding progressive social movements.

References

• Cornel West on Twitter