One of the most prolific academics to come to prominence in the 1990s, Cornel West is professor of African American studies and religion at Harvard University and a leading author, philosopher, and social critic on race and culture. West is a pragmatist thinker inspired by Chekovian thought and prophetic African American Christianity, who considers himself a non-Marxist socialist in the American pragmatic tradition.

Cornel Ronald West was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2 June 1953. When West was four years old, his family moved to Sacramento, California. His mother, Irene Bias West, was an elementary schoolteacher who became a principal and later had an elementary school named after her in Sacramento, and his father, Clifton L. West Jr., was a civilian air force administrator. An older brother, Clifton L. West III, and two younger sisters, Cynthia and Cheryl, completed the West family. Cornel West was distinguished early in his school career...