Tommie Shelby

Tommie Shelby received his B.A. from Florida A & M University (1990) and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh (1998). Prior to coming to Harvard in 2000, he taught philosophy at Ohio State University (1996-2000). His main areas of research and teaching are Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, and social theory.

He is the author of We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Harvard, 2005) and coeditor (with Derrick Darby) of Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (Open Court, 2005). Other recent publications include: “Racism, Moralism, and Social Criticism,” Du Bois Review (forthcoming); “Impure Dissent: Hip Hop and the Political Ethics of Marginalized Black Urban Youth,” in From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in a Digital Age, ed. Danielle Allen and Jennifer Light (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming); “Liberalism, Self-Respect, and Troubling Cultural Patterns in Ghettos,” in The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, ed. Orlando Patterson and Ethan Fosse (Harvard University Press, forthcoming); “Race” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, ed. David Estlund (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 336-353; “Justice, Work, and the Ghetto Poor,” Law & Ethics of Human Rights 6 (2012): 70-96; “The Ethics of Uncle Tom’s Children,” Critical Inquiry 38 (Spring 2012): 513-532; "Justice and Racial Conciliation: Two Visions," Daedalus 140 (Winter 2011): 95-107; “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto,”