Dr. Cornel West – is an American philosopher, academic, activist, author, public intellectual and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The son of a Baptist minister, West received his undergraduate education at Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1973, and received a PhD at Princeton University in 1980, becoming the first African American to graduate from Princeton with a PhD in philosophy. He taught at Harvard in 2001 and was a Professor of African American Studies at Princeton before leaving the school in 2011 to become Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He has also spent time teaching at the University of Paris.
