Cornel Ronald West is an American scholar, public intellectual, sociologist, critic, pastor, and civil rights activist. Formerly a professor at Harvard University, currently West is a professor of Religion and director of African American Studies at Princeton.

West is known for his combination of political and moral insight and criticism, and his contribution to the post-1960s civil rights movement. The bulk of his work focuses upon the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their “radical conditionedness”. West draws intellectual contributions from such diverse traditions as the African American Baptist Church, Marxism, pragmatism, transcendentalism, and Anton Chekhov.