At times his activism created tensions with the administrations of the universities where he taught. In 2003 he appeared as the character Councillor West in the popular movies The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. “Black Socialists of America Is Putting Anti-Capitalism on the Map.” The Nation, September 4, 2019. Cornel West speaking at an event in Tempe, Arizona. Scheer, Peter Z. West was always a political activist as well as an academic, and he did not hesitate to participate in demonstrations or to lend his name or presence to causes he felt were just. Cramer, Ruby. He also recorded a hip-hop-like spoken-word album, Sketches of My Culture (2001), and a collection of spoken-word and music, Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations (2007). [35] Perhaps most controversially, West compared the September 11 terrorist attacks to the everyday experience of African Americans, writing that white Americans after 9/11 understood the African American experience in the days after the terrorist attacks because they felt “unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hatred.” [36] Democracy Matters further attacks the United States, claiming that representatives in President George W. Bush’s administration were “evangelical nihilists – drunk with power and driven by grand delusions of American domination of the world.” [37], Over the last several decades, West’s scholarly work has been criticized even by close associates, including his former protégé and close friend Michael Eric Dyson. Seelye, Katharine Q. a way of preserving the condition for the possibility of any kind of democratic practice in the United States." He returned to Princeton in 2002 as Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies. “Cornel West Makes The Case For Bernie Sanders In South Carolina.” BET.com, February 24, 2020. West's influences range from European philosophy to the black church and the Black Panthers. Corrections? [52] [53] Though West later turned on controversial left-progressive activist Al Sharpton, calling him the “bonafide house negro of the Obama plantation,” he nonetheless advised Sharpton’s exploratory presidential campaign in 2004. [17] West’s family moved to Sacramento in 1958 after a brief stint in Topeka, Kansas. Cornel West Many years ago, before he was a familiar presence on television, film, and radio, before he dropped his Reader in 1999—a decades-spanning collection of his passionate, polymathic essays—and was recognized, rightly, as one of the most dynamic public intellectuals in America, some people couldn’t get a grip on Cornel West. “Goodbye, American Neoliberalism. [29] [30], West has written 22 books, with Race Matters (1993) and Democracy Matters (2004) becoming the most notable. Accessed July 9, 2020. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cornel-West, BlackPast - Biography of Cornel Ronald West, Cornel West - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). He attended graduate school in philosophy at Princeton University, where he was influenced by the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. (Other Group), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). California State University, Sacramento, November 11, 2005. [114]. Los Angeles Times, February 11, 2020. [24] Through college, West worked with the Black Panthers on weekends in the organization’s breakfast and prison programs. “True West.” Sactown Magazine. “The Ghost of Cornel West.” The New Republic, April 19, 2015. “‘America’s Moment of Reckoning’: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor & Cornel West on Uprising Against Racism.” Democracy Now!, July 3, 2020. [58] Even after Sanders exited the race in 2016, West refused to support Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, instead opting to support far-left Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Despite appearing on behalf of the Obama campaign over 65 times, West was reportedly offended when Obama did not invite West his family to the presidential inauguration. Tzul, Richard. [99], West later launched a decade-long barrage of attacks on the former president, calling him a “war criminal” whose support of Israel and drone warfare made him complicit in civilian casualties. [102] In a 2014 opinion piece for Salon, West claimed that “Black people have suffered more in this age than in the recent past,” calling the Obama presidency one that “conceals the escalating measures of social misery in poor and Black America.” [103] In a later 2014 interview with Salon, West increased his attacks on Obama, calling him a “brown-faced Clinton. West was introduced by Ty Austin, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Architecture, who outlined the issue West discussed: Institutions benefit by developing stable identities, but too much conformity, or too narrow an institutional identity, can limit an university’s ability to influence an ever-changing world. ‪Dr. 3 – Vol. “Cornel West, DSA Honorary Chair.” Democratic Socialists of America. West, Cornel. Dr. Cornel West, unarguably one of America’s most gifted and provocative public intellectuals, has been profoundly influenced by Dr. King. Another neoliberal opportunist.” [104] As Obama prepared to exit office, West claimed that “a post-Obama America is an America in post-traumatic depression.” [105], West’s critique quickly turned personal against Obama, with West claiming that his “dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men.” [106] [107] West’s critique went on to claim that Obama is a “young brother who grows up in a white context” and that, “All he has known culturally is white […] When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening.” [108] Despite the African-American community’s widespread embrace of Obama, West portrayed him as alienated from black Americans, claiming that Obama “feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy, and very effective in getting what they want.” [109], Even after Obama left office, West continued to excoriate his presidential record for not being far-left enough, writing a 2017 piece in the Guardian entitled “Pity the Sad Legacy of Barack Obama.” [110] West laments Obama’s lost opportunity to “break from our neoliberal soulcraft,” calling America “rooted in market-driven brands that shun integrity and profit-driven policies that trump public goods.” [111] The article goes on to criticize Obama for not prosecuting Wall Street executives during the 2008 financial crisis, for supporting Israel, for decrying riots in Baltimore, for promoting educational choice and charter schools, and for instituting the Affordable Care Act instead of a fully government-run health care plan. It’s like a Rembrandt Painting, Cornel West Says.” Los Angeles Times. FOX News Network, May 29, 2019. As Cornel West says, "A vote for Biden is . New York Daily News, August 10, 2015. Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ), led a political committee to explore a possible presidential campaign for left-progressive activist Al Sharpton, and published a rap album. [60]  Most of West’s involvement on the campaign centered around mobilizing African-American voters to support Sanders, who would lose the demographic to former Vice President Joe Biden. [100] Over the course of Obama’s tenure as president, West’s attacks became more vicious, calling Obama a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs” and a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface.” [101], In 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appointed Cornel West as one of his advisers to the Democratic Party’s platform committee, provoking outrage from the mainstream left given West’s contention that President Obama had made life worse for African Americans. His influential book Race Matters (1993) lamented what he saw as the spiritual impoverishment of the African American underclass and critically examined the “crisis of black leadership” in the United States. [14], West’s recent work has even been critiqued by former allies, including West’s one-time protégé Michael Eric Dyson, who published a ten-thousand word piece in The New Republic entitled “The Ghost of Cornel West,” alleging that West is “still a Man of Ideas, but those ideas today are a vain and unimaginative repackaging of his earlier hits.” [15] West has not published a book outside of Democracy Matters without the aid of a co-writer since 1993, and even Dyson criticized his recent works as written with “haunting hubris.” [16], West was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 2, 1953 to Cliff Lincoln West Jr, a procurement officer with the Department of Defense, and Irene West, a teacher and school administrator. “Cornel West in Ferguson: ‘I Came Here to Go to Jail’.” Truthdig, July 3, 2017. “Cornel West: The Building of a Black Intellectual Empire.” Black Enterprise, February 7, 2013. West’s father was a civilian U.S. Air Force administrator and his mother an elementary school teacher and eventually a principal. Cornel West is a left-wing academic, philosopher, and public intellectual noted for working as one of the honorary chairs of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. American philosopher and political activist. Eventually West resigned his position at Harvard and moved to Princeton.