CORNEL WEST
Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion, Princeton University

Cornel West is the paradigmatic public intellectual who joins faith and reason, ideas and action and criticism and prophecy to be the public teacher.  He calls to  the heart of American democracy, to the heart of humanity, to recognize the supreme value of human diversity.  Decrying divisiveness, he challenges the divisions, the isms of race, class, gender and politics, and charts a course to 21st century human wholeness.

Healing America’s pernicious and persistent dysfunctional racism has been the imperative locus of most of Dr. West’s work.  His book, Race Matters, (1993) has been a best-seller and continues to be used by teachers and leaders to stimulate the dialogue and activity which he advocates. In this book and others, including Restoring Hope, The American Evasion of Philosophy, Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin, The War Against Parents, The Future of American Progressivism and The Cornel West Reader, he teaches how the growing divisions in our society foster the despair and distrust that undermine our democratic process.  He continues to prod and provoke the conscience of America.  In the grand tradition of Socrates, through his lectures, his publications and his public conversation, he makes full use of media and all avenues of communication available and accessible to teach, preach and reach across race and class, speaking the message of hope and meaning which he posits as essential to this healing.  His message is the celebration of the diversity which enlarges and expands human possibility and reaches a common ground respecting and embracing but not fearing or denying human diversity.

Dr. West was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the grandson of a Baptist minister. He attended schools in Oklahoma and Kansas and graduated from high school in Sacramento, California, having already shown his academic prowess.  Three years after arriving at Harvard he earned his AB degree, magna cum laude.  He earned his MA (1975) and PhD (1980) degrees from Princeton.  From 1977 to 1984 he taught at Union Theological Seminary, and then went to the Yale Divinity School for three years. He returned to Union Theological Seminary in 1987 for one year and then became Professor of Religion and Director of the Program in African-American Studies at Princeton University.  In 1993 Dr. West joined the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University and became Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor in 1998, one of only 14 University Professors in the entire University.  In 2002 he returned to Princeton as the Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion and African American Studies.|

In each of these appointments he has demonstrated an unparalleled appreciation for the value of bringing together the perspectives of the various humanities and social sciences and by joining his own perspective with that of colleagues within and without the academy.  As Director of the African American Studies Program at Princeton, he gathered a multi-disciplinary group of literary artists and scholars to explicate the African American experience in history and literature.  While life in the academy gravitates towards increasing specialization and distance from the world, his studies include the full range of the liberal arts as well as his own explorations and study of music, especially jazz, film and architecture and full participation in society.  As engaged philosopher, he pulls from his experience, his studies and his faith to illumine and address the challenge of America: to be faithful to the national aspiration of e pluribus unum.

For his leadership as a person of conscience and commitment whose life is so generously engaged in responding to society’s aching need for justice and equity and for his teaching, scholarship and public witness of a life devoted to the betterment of all people, especially the marginalized, The College of New Rochelle confers on Cornel West the degree Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.