I am so excited to welcome my very dear friend; Dr Cornel West onto today's episode of The Piano With Harriet Stubbs.
Cornel and I serendipitously met 10 years ago at Pisticci's on NYC Harlem's La Salle; bonding over Blake, Beethoven, and a burning desire to soak up all the enlightenment that this planet has to offer.
Cornel is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is Former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton.
He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies.
In short, Cornel West has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.
Cornel has appeared in The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded, Cornell also provides the voice for the video game Into The Matrix. In addition West provides philosophical commentary on all three matrix films in the Ultimate Matrix Collection along with the integral theorist Ken Wilber. Cornel has appearances on documentary films such as the 2008 film Examined Life, a documentary featuring several academics, discussing philosophy in real world contexts. West: "Driving through Manhattan,...compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be." West also appeared in the television series 30 Rock and Law & Order.
Cornel has released three albums including collaborations with Prince, Talib Kweli, Jill Scott, Andre 3000, KRS-1, and Gerald Levers as well as being featured on Brother Ali's album;
