Spoken word artist and author Cornel West to speak at York U tonight

Cornel West
Cornel West
Cornel West

The York Federation of Students (YFS) is hosting influential author and academic Cornel West as part of their Xpressions against Oppression effort.

West’s lecture will take place tonight in 102 Accolade East Building at 7pm. Tickets for York U Students are $2 each and $5 for members of the York University community. Tickets can be purchased in the YFS Member Services Office, 106  Student Centre.

West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual.  He is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University.  He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his MA and Ph.D in Philosophy at Princeton.  He has taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard and the University of Paris.  He has written 19 books and edited 13 books.  He is best known for his classic Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his new memoir, Brother West:  Living and Loving Out Loud.  He appears frequently on the “Bill Maher Show”, the “Colbert Report”, CNN and C-Span as well as on Tavis Smiley’s PBS TV Show.  He can be heard weekly with Tavis Smiley on “Smiley & West”, the national public radio program distributed by Public Radio International.

He made his film debut in the Matrix – and was the commentator (with Ken Wilbur) on the official trilogy released in 2004.  He also has appeared in over 25 documentaries. West has recorded three spoken word albums and his recent spoken word interludes were featured on Terence Blanchard’s Choices (which won the Grand Prix in France for the best Jazz Album of the year of 2009), The Cornel West Theory’s Second Rome and the Raheem DeVaughn’s Love & War: Masterpeace.  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.