Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, academic, activist, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The son of a Baptist minister, West received his undergraduate education at Harvard University, graduating with his bachelor's degree in 1973, and received his Ph.D at Princeton University in 1980, becoming the first ever African American to graduate from Princeton with a Ph.D in philosophy. He was formerly The Class of 1943 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton before leaving the school in 2011 to become Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at the Union Theological Seminary[4] in New York City. He previously taught at Harvard before leaving the school after a highly publicized dispute with then-president Lawrence Summers, and has also spent time teaching at the University of Paris. The bulk of West's work focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical conditionedness." West draws intellectual contributions from multiple traditions, including Christianity, the black church, Marxism, neopragmatism, and transcendentalism. Among his most influential books are Race Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004). West is a frequent media commentator on political and social issues. He often appears on networks such as CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and PBS and programs such as Real Time With Bill Maher, The Colbert Report, and The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. Since 2010 he has also co-hosted a radio program with Tavis Smiley, called Smiley and West. He has also been featured in several documentaries, and made appearances in Hollywood blockbuster films The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, also providing commentary for the films. He has also made several spoken word and hip hop albums, and has been named MTV's Artist of the Week for his work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornel_West Tavis Smiley (/ˈtævɨs/; born September 13, 1964) is an American talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, and grew up in Bunker Hill, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles. Smiley became a radio commentator in 1991, and starting in 1996, he hosted the talk show BET Talk (later renamed BET Tonight) on BET. Controversially, after Smiley sold an exclusive interview of Sara Jane Olson to ABC News in 2001, BET declined to renew Smiley's contract that year. Smiley then began hosting The Tavis Smiley Show on NPR from 2002 to 2004 and currently hosts Tavis Smiley on PBS on the weekdays and "The Tavis Smiley Show" from PRI. Starting in 2010 Smiley and Dr. Cornel West have joined forces for their own radio talk show, Smiley & West. They were featured together interviewing musician Bill Withers in the 2009 documentary film Still Bill. He is the new host of "Tavis Talks" on BlogTalkRadio's Tavis Smiley Network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavis_Smiley Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author, social critic, and political activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time and winner of the Palme d'Or. His films Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Sicko (2007) also placed in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries,[4] and the former won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, which documented his personal quest to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections.[5] He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth. Moore's written and cinematic works criticize globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_moore Image By Esther (originally posted to Flickr as cornel west!!!) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

• published: 16 Jan 2014
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