Dr. Cornel West brought his message of love and its power to shape who each of us will become to a Black History Month Morning Meeting talk at Taft, followed by a Q&A session in the Woodward Black Box Theater.

“I am who I am because somebody loved me—cared for me,” Dr. Cornel West told the Taft community during Morning Meeting. “You are who you are because somebody loved you, tended to you, sacrificed for you. What kind of human are you going to choose to be in the short move from your momma’s womb to tomb? That at its deepest level is what education is all about.”

How each of us chooses the kind of human we will be is shaped by the gifts and grace bestowed upon us by those who have loved and come before us, Dr. West noted. It is also shaped by the communities we come from.

“I come from a great people; a Black people,” said Dr. West. “A people who, in the face of 400 years of hatred, keep dishing out love warriors every generation… How? Because I choose to be a certain kind of person…That’s as human as it gets. That’s precisely what community, justice, belonging is all about.”

Morning Meeting, 2/21/23: Dr. Cornel West from Taft School on Vimeo.

Dr. Cornel West, affectionately known to many as Brother West, is a professor, philosopher, author, and activist. He is currently the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary, where he teaches Bonhoeffer’s works, and courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects (including but not limited to) the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. Dr. West is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton.

Dr. West has written 20 books, notably 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. He 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.