Tommie Shelby | Solidarity, Politics, and Intellectual Life

Opening Remarks by Stanford President Jonathan Levin

The 2025 Presidential Lecture in the Humanities and Arts presents Harvard philosopher Tommie Shelby. His lecture will examine what role intellectuals from oppressed groups should play in the struggle for their group's liberation. It draws on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Richard Wright to ask whether such intellectuals should subordinate their interest in art and ideas to political resistance against injustice. It also probes a deep tension between the characteristic dispositions of intellectuals and the demands of political solidarity, and it asks how (if at all) this tension might be resolved or lessened.

 About the Speaker

Tommie Shelby is Lee Simpkins Family Professor of Arts and Sciences and Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University. He is the author of Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform (Harvard University Press, 2016), which won the Spitz Prize from the Conference for the Study of Political Thought and the 2016 Book Award from the North American Society for Social Philosophy. He is also the author of We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Harvard University Press, 2005). He and Brandon M. Terry coedited To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harvard University Press, 2018). He and Derrick Darby co-edited Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (Open Court, 2005).

Shelby’s most recent book is The Idea of Prison Abolition (Princeton University Press, 2022), which was co-winner of the Easton Award from the Foundations of Political Thought section of the American Political Science Association.

Shelby’s writings focus on racial justice, economic justice, and criminal justice and on the history of black political thought. His numerous articles have appeared in journals such as Philosophy & Public Affairs, Ethics, Political Theory, Critical Inquiry, Du Bois Review, Critical Philosophy of Race, Criminal Law and Philosophy, Journal of Social Philosophy, and Daedalus. He has also contributed to The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, Boston Review, The Root, Jacobin, The Point, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Shelby is former co-editor of Transition, a literary and cultural magazine with a focus on Africa and its Diaspora. He has served as the President of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

About the Series

The Presidential Lectures bring distinguished scholars, artists, and critics to the Stanford University campus for lectures, seminars, panel discussions, and a variety of related interactions with faculty, students, and the community at large.


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