Cornel West

Cornel West is an American philosopher and public intellectual whose career has spanned universities, documentary film, and recorded spoken word. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and raised in Sacramento, California, he studied at Harvard College and took a master's degree and a doctorate in philosophy at Princeton University, where he became the first African American to earn that degree in the subject. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth, among other institutions, and his books include Race Matters (1993) and Democracy Matters (2004). He has appeared in documentaries such as Examined Life (2008), in which he discusses philosophy in everyday settings, and Still Bill (2009), and he played Councillor West in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions while providing commentary on those films. He has also released spoken word and hip hop albums, starting with Sketches of My Culture in 2001.