Cornel West set to speak at SU

Noted as one of America’s most gifted, provocative and important public intellectuals, Cornel West, professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, will speak on Thursday, April 3 at 7 p.m. in the Smith-Brown Memorial Union Cotillion Ballroom
West is the fourth speaker in Southern University’s 2002-2003 Motivational Speaker Series.
West has won numerous awards and has received more than 20 honorary degrees.
West’s best-selling book Race Matters (1993), which has sold 400,000 copies, changed the course of America’s dialogue on race, justice and democracy. His writings, along with his frequent lecturing and preaching, have brought him widespread attention and honors.
West’s first book, Prophesy Deliverance! (1982), advocated a socially concerned African American Christianity that draws from Marxism. His American Evasion of Philosophy (1989) engages the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the tradition of American pragmatism.
Through the 1990’s and into this decade, West has continued to produce a steady stream of authored and co-authored books for academics and for a more general audience, including Breaking Bread (1991) Jews and Black (with Michael Lerner, 1995); The Future of the Race (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 1996); and The African-American Century:
How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century (with Gates, 2000).
West has worked with numerous political and social organizations. He has been a long-time member and serves as an honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.  He co-chaired the National Parenting Organization’s Task Force on Parent Empowerment.  He was part of President Clinton’s National Conversation on Race. He has joined Al Sharpton’s Presidential exploratory committee.
West received his A.B. from Harvard University in 1973, graduating magna cum laude.
Martin Kilson, one of West’s professors, recalled him as “the most intellectually aggressive and highly cerebral student I have taught in my 30 years here.”
West went on to receive his M.A. and his Ph.D. from Princeton. From 1977-1993, he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale Divinity School and Princeton University, as a professor of religion and director of the African-American Studies Program.
West joined the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University in 1993 and became Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor in 1998.
He returned to Princeton in 2002 as the Class of 1943 University Professor or Religion.
The event is opened to the public.