Lewis Gordon

Lewis R. Gordon is a philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician (drums, other percussive instruments, and piano) who achieved his Ph.D. in philosophy with distinction from Yale university and his undergraduate degrees in philosophy and political science with honors, which included phi beta kappa and pi sigma alpha, through the Lehman Scholars Program, in which he also studied classics, at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Gordon’s research in philosophy is in Africana philosophy, philosophy of existence, phenomenology, social and political philosophy, philosophy of culture, race, and racism, aesthetics, philosophy of education, philosophy of science and technology, philosophy of human sciences, Jewish philosophy, global southern philosophy, philosophy of medicine, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, and multidimensional theory.

As a public intellectual, Gordon has written for a variety of political forums, newspapers, and magazines, and he has lectured and organized workshops and political meetings across the globe. He is Professor and Head of the Philosophy Department at UCONN-Storrs, where he also has affiliations in Judaic Studies, Caribbean and Latinx Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Global Affairs. His visiting appointments include Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, and Honorary Professor in (UHURU) the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes in South Africa, and adjunct Professor at Fort Hare in East London, South Africa. He is also The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy, The University of the West Indies, Mona (2021–). His previous appointments include the 2018–2019 Boaventura de Sousa Santos Chair in the Faculty for Economics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal; the Nelson Mandela Distinguished Visiting Chair in Political and International Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa (2014–2015), the European Union Chair in Euro-Philosophy at the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France (2014–2019); Writer-in-Residence at the Birkbeck School of Law at the University of London (2016), the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple University (2004–2013), where he also founded and directed the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought, Professor of Africana Studies, Contemporary Religious Thought, and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University (1996–2004), Visiting Professor of African and African American Studies at Yale University (1999), and Philosophy and African American Studies at Purdue University (1993–1996).

His major works include Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanities, 1995), which will appear in a revised 2nd edition with a foreword by Mabogo More under the Classics in Humanities Books series in the Rowman & Littlefield International catalog in 2022, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man, whose 2nd edition will be published with commentaries by an international group of scholars under Routledge in 2022, Her Majesty’s Other Children (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997; 2nd edition forthcoming), which won the Gustavus Myer Award for Outstanding work on Human Rights, Existentia Africana (Routledge, 2000), Disciplinary Decadence (Routledge, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2008; 2nd edition forthcoming), What Fanon Said (Fordham UP, Hurst Publishers, and Wits UP, 2015), and, with Jane Anna Gordon, A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006), which was NetLibrary’s e-book of the month in 2007, Not Only the Master’s Tools (Routledge, 2006), Of Divine Warning (Routledge, 2009), and, with Fernanda Bragato Frizzo, Geopolitics and Decolonization (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017).

His most recent books are Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021) and Fear of Black Consciousness(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022; London: Penguin Books, 2022) and as a Macmillan Audiobook (read by Landon Woodson and Lewis R. Gordon); with German translation, Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, forthcoming; Brazilian Portuguese translation, São Paulo: Todavia, forthcoming; Portugal Portuguese translation, Lisbon: Penguin Random House Portugal, forthcoming), and 论哲学、去殖民化与种族 (“On Philosophy, Decolonization, and Race”), trans. Li Beilei (Wuhan, China: Wuhan University Press). He co-edits, with Jane Anna Gordon and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, the Rowman & Littlefield International book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and, with Rozena Maart, Epifania Amoo-Adare, and Sayan Dey, the Routledge-India book series Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World (Routledge-India). He also edits, with Jane Anna Gordon, the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs. He is Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies and a former President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, for which he now serves as its chairperson of awards and global collaborations. He is the 2022 recipient of the Eminent Scholar Award from the Global Development Studies division of the International Studies Association.