A lecture delivered on May 27, 2007. Cornel West is Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion and former director of the Program in African American Studies at Princeton, as well as a former University Professor at Harvard. Among his many publications are Democracy Matters (Penguin, 2004), Race Matters (Beacon, 1993), and The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).