Philosopher, author, and raconteur Cornel West brought his message of “fire in the soul, joy in the heart” to Loyola Marymount University in the second installment of the Global Conversation series with Henry Louis Gates Jr., presented by the Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture, and Arts.
A crowd of nearly 600 people filled Lawton Plaza the afternoon of Oct. 7, 2022, as West and Gates took to LMU’s Drollinger Family Stage to discuss “The Culture Wars: Black and White,” their enduring friendship, and the influences in their careers.
“Tell the truth, no matter what,” West said, as he used myriad examples from literature, history, and his personal life to hammer home his point. The two renowned professors and prominent intellectuals held the audience of VIPs, students, faculty and staff, and community members in rapt attention, often calling out members of the crowd to make a personal connection or to confirm a point. True to the cultural theme, their conversation was punctuated with references to music and musicians from the 1950s to the present, African American history, and prominent Black scholars, including Albert Raboteau ’64, one of the nation’s foremost scholars of African American religion.
West, the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary, is best known for his work as a philosopher, author, activist, actor, and recording artist. He is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University. West graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in three years and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton. He has written 20 books and has edited 13; he is best known for his classics “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 19th and 20th century African American leaders and their visionary legacies.
Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, was participating in his second Global Conversation; he was joined at LMU in March 2022 by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Gates is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder. Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films. “The Black Church” (PBS) and “Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches” (HBO), which he executive produced, have each received Emmy nominations. His latest history series for PBS is “Making Black America: Through the Grapevine,” and his groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series “Finding Your Roots” is now in its ninth season on PBS.
Gates is a recipient of numerous honorary degrees, including from his alma mater, the University of Cambridge, England. He was a member of the first class awarded “genius grants” by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998 he became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He earned his B.A. in history, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Clare College at Cambridge in 1979.
Gates asked what first attracted West to philosophy, leading West to reminisce about the bookmobile he frequented in his hometown of Sacramento. At approximately 11 years old, West recalled, he read “Story of Philosophy” by Will Durant and fell in love with wisdom. Continuing in that vein, West said that “Philosophy needs to go to school and interact with art, poetry, and the sciences.”
On the topic of the Black church and its role in African American life, West said the church was “institutional armor” and “a refuge of safety and dignity … What went into making Black culture was the deep sense of love, to know where they came from.” He frequently juxtaposed the love and solidarity of the church as the need for a morally consistent response to predatory capitalism.
When the conversation turned to the future, West’s characteristic expansive view of life and thought unfolded. “Don’t confine the terrain,” he said, mixing imagery and practicality. “Opt for democratic renewal and find ways to broaden our vision.”
In a closing note, Gates asked West what change he saw in race over the last 60 years in the U.S. “We lost sight of what Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and John Coltrane were saying about love,” West said. He added that race had become disconnected from class and from empire, leading to an emphasis on material gain as a measure of success. “I’m committed to people who are suffering.”
He saw this as an “erasure of democratic sensibilities,” and said, “You can’t have democracy with only spectators – we need participants.”
