Commencement 2023
Dr. Cornel West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West 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 -- including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. 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.
Dr. West is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained 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 nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies.
Within the past year, Dr. West has partnered with MasterClass to provide teachings on several courses such as his class with Pharrell Williams on Empathy, his multi-instructor class on Black History, Black Freedom & Black Love, and his standalone class on Philosophy. Visit www.cornelwest.com to learn more.
Eighty-five students graduated with their medical degrees on Thursday, June 8, 2023 at New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, New Jersey. The group included the 2019 cohort of students who graduated in four years and students from the 2020 cohort, who completed their degrees on an accelerated three-year track.
