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Dr. Cornel West, a university professor at Harvard and the author of many books on race relations, will visit Hamilton College for a discussion and lecture on Friday, April 14. The discussion will take place from 2-3:30 p.m. in the Kirner-Johnson Auditorium, and the lecture will begin at 7 p.m. in the college Chapel. Both are free and open to the public.

Dr. West is the author of numerous articles and 14 books, including The American Evasion of Philosophy, Jews and Blacks, The Future of the Race and Restoring Hope. His 1997 book, Race Matters, a collection of essays about race in America, quickly achieved best-seller status in both editions and gained the attention of Time magazine and Newsweek, prompting both publications to run extensive profiles on him. The War Against Parents, co-written with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, with whom he co-chairs the National Parenting Association's Task Force on Parent Empowerment, was published in April 1998. His most recent publication (written with Roberto Unger), The Future of American Progressivism, teaches how the growing divisions in our society foster the despair and distrust that undermine our democratic process.

After attending public school in Sacramento,West went to Harvard University where he graduated magna cum laude in three years in 1973. He went on to Princeton University, where he received his master's degree in 1975 and his Ph.D. in 1980. He returned to Princeton in 1987 as professor of religion and director of the Afro-American Studies department. After helping to build that department, West moved to Harvard where he now serves as Professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy of Religion.

Recently promoted to university professor, a title held by only 14 of Harvard's 2,200 faculty members, he is one of the first black scholars to be appointed to the university's highest faculty post. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chairman of Harvard's department of Afro-American Studies and keynote speaker at Hamilton's commencement in 1999, describes West as "one of America's most important public intellectuals, and a formidable scholar by any measure."

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