Cornel West was born June 2, 1953 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father was a U.S civilian Air Force administrator and his mother a teacher who eventually became a principle. During West's childhood he moved to Sacramento, California where he was raised. There he attended services at the local baptist church which held testimonials where parishioners ,who where only the grandchildren of slaves, told stories of slavery and maintaining religious faith during the hardest of times. This along with the nearness of the offices of the Black Panther Party raised great influence on West and exposed him to the importance of political activism. As a young man West became active in the struggle for civil rights. He organized protests demanding black studies in the courses at his high school and also marched in civil rights demonstrations. West was the president of his high school class. At age 17 he enrolled at Harvard University on a scholarship. When West was recruited to Harvard he, as he puts it, was determined to press the university and it's intellectual traditions into the service of his political agendas. "Owing to my family, church, and the black social movements of the 1960s," he says, "I arrived at Harvard unashamed of my African, Christian, and militant de-colonized outlooks. More pointedly, I acknowledged and accented the empowerment of my black styles, mannerisms, and viewpoints, my Christian values of service, love, humility, and struggle, and my anti-colonial sense of self-determination for oppressed people and nations around the world." Three years later he graduated "magna cum laude" -with great honor or with great praise- with a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern languages. One of West's professors, recalls him as "the most intellectually aggressive and highly cerebral student I have taught in my 30 years here." West later went on to Princeton University to attend graduate school in philosophy. Here he earned his Ph.D in 1980. He then taught religion, African...