Cornel West at Worcester State in 2008

Cornel West to Speak About the ‘American Dream Reimagined’

March 16, 2016
By: Guest Contributor

Author and scholar Dr. Cornel West will speak at Worcester State University, on Wednesday, March 30 at 10:30 a.m. in the May Street Building (formerly Temple Emanuel). The lecture, “The American Dream Reimagined: Race, Ethnicity, and Education.” is free and open to the public.

In 2008, more than 1,100 people attended his lecture at WSU, during which he covered history and philosophy, with an emphasis on unconditional love and humanity.

One of the nation’s most provocative and insightful intellectuals on matters such as racial justice, West’s writing, speaking, and teaching weave together the traditions of the black Baptist Church, progressive politics, and jazz. West graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University after only three years, and after earning his doctorate at Princeton, he became a professor of religion at the university and the director of its Afro-American Studies program. West has also taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris.

West, who has written twenty books and edited thirteen, burst onto the national scene in 1993 with his bestselling book, Race Matters – a searing analysis of racism in American democracy that has become a contemporary classic.

In his latest work, The Radical King, West annotates and introduces twenty-three selections of work by Martin Luther King Jr. in an effort to argue against the notion that he was less radical than his contemporaries, such as Malcolm X.

Worcester State University President Barry M. Malone has encouraged faculty, staff, and students to attend the event, highlighting it as one that fosters cross-racial interaction. The lecture is part of the Third World Alliance’s “Courageous Conversations” series, which is in its 10th year. A book signing will immediately follow the lecture.

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