An American philosopher, Cornel West (born 1953) quickly won recognition as a critic of culture, an interpreter of African American experience, an advocate of social justice, and an analyst of Post-Modern art and philosophy.

Cornel West, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1953, lived most of his childhood and youth in segregated working-class neighborhoods in Oklahoma, Kansas, and California. In high school he excelled in scholarship and athletics. He earned his A.B. at Harvard University, then completed his doctorate in philosophy at Princeton in 1980. While a graduate student, he was a teaching assistant in humanities and ethics at Harvard and in philosophy at Princeton.

In 1977 he joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York, teaching classical and contemporary philosophy. From 1984 to 1987 he taught at the Yale University Divinity School, then returned to Union in 1987-1988. In 1988 Princeton University tapped him to be the director of its African American...