Events & Calendars “How Not to Think About Race, Culture and Class”: A Talk by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a professor of philosophy and law at New York University and has written about a range of topics. He explored questions of African and African-American identity in In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, examined the cultural dimensions of global citizenship in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers and investigated the social and individual importance of identity in The Ethics of Identity. Appiah's discussion of “How Not To Think About Race, Culture and Class” will be followed by a Q&A.

Appiah was born in London, where his Ghanaian father was a law student, but moved as an infant to Kumasi, Ghana, where he grew up. His father, Joseph Emmanuel Appiah, a lawyer and politician, was also, at various times, a member of parliament, an ambassador and a president of the Ghana Bar Association. His English mother, the novelist and children’s writer Peggy Appiah, was active in the social, philanthropic and cultural life of Kumasi. Appiah completed his bachelor of arts and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy at Cambridge University and has taught philosophy in Ghana, France, Britain and the United States. In 2012 he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama for seeking eternal truths in the contemporary world. His latest book, from Harvard University Press, is As If: Idealizations and Ideals.

The talk is free and open to the public. Appiah's books will be available for sale at the event.