Black Politics in Dark Times

A public conversation with Brandon Terry, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Cornel West, moderated by Robert Gooding‑Williams, concluding a daylong symposium on Terry’s Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope.

Brandon Terry, Harvard University
Brandon Terry ’12 Ph.D. is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and the co-director of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. An award-winning scholar of African American political thought, political theory, and the politics of race and inequality, Terry is the author of Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement. He is also the editor, with Tommie Shelby, of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the editor of Fifty Years Since MLK. He has two current book projects. The first focuses on Malcom X’s legacy for pressing academic and activist debates about crime, political theology, identity politics, and internationalism. The second explores how Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy can conceptually and normatively sharpen professional philosophy and contemporary political struggles regarding questions of peace, justice, dignity, and democracy.

Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia University
Farah Jasmine Griffin ’92 Ph.D. is University Professor at Columbia University—the highest academic distinction the university confers on its faculty—where she also served as the inaugural chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department. She is the author or editor of eight books, including Who Set You Flowin’? The African American Migration Narrative, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, and Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II. Her scholarship explores African American literature, music, history, and politics. Recognized as a Guggenheim and Mellon Foundation Fellow, she continues to shape discourse on Black literature and cultural studies through her influential essays and academic leadership at Columbia.

Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary
Cornel West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. He teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects encompassing philosophy, politics, literature, and the classics. West is dedicated to engaging diverse audiences and advancing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He previously served as Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He was the first Black man to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1980. West’s most celebrated publications include Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.

Cosponsored by Political Philosophy and Race Speaker Series in the Department of Philosophy, Whitney Humanities Center, and Yale Institute on Incarceration and Public Safety