Cornel West, Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, is one of America's most gifted, provocative and important public intellectuals. Dr. West has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award and has received more than 20 honorary degrees.

His work has been described as a "polemical weapon that attempts to transform linguistic, social, cultural and political tradition to increase the scope of individual development and democratic actions". West's writing, speaking,and teaching weave together the American traditions of the Baptist Church, transcendentalism, socialism and pragmatism.

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) , advocates 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, especially the thought of John Dewey.

Through the 1990s 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 (with Bell Hooks, 1991), Race Matters (1993); Jews and Blacks (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 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 2000). His recent work also includes two important books he co-authored on public policy issues: The Future of American Progressivism (with Roberto Unger, 1998) and The War Against Parents (with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, 1998).

West has worked with numerous political and social organizations. He has been a long-time member, and now 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 is a co-chair of the Tikkun Community. He was part of President Clinton's National Conversation on Race. He was involved with Al Sharpton's Presidential exploratory committee.

West was an undergraduate at Harvard, where among his teachers was political philosopher John Rawls, receiving the AB Magna Cum Laude in 1973. He earned MA (1975) and PhD (1980) degrees from Princeton. From 1977 to 1984 and 1987-88 West taught at Union Theological Seminary, with an appointment at Yale Divinty School from 1984-87 intervening. From 1988 to 1993 West was Professor of Religion and director of the Program in African-American Studies at Princeton. In 1993 West joined the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard Univerity and became Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor in 1998. In 2002 West returned to Princeton University as the Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion and African American Studies.