Cornel West to Deliver Opening Keynote Lecture at 2023 AERA Annual Meeting


October 2022

Cornel West

AERA has announced that preeminent scholar and public intellectual Cornel West will deliver the opening keynote lecture at the 2023 AERA Annual Meeting. The lecture will be held on Thursday, April 13, 2023, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. CT. It will take place before those attending in Chicago and will be simultaneously broadcast worldwide to AERA virtual attendees.

West’s lecture will be immediately followed by a conversation with AERA President Rich Milner, with moderated Q&A with audience members. 

“I am excited that Dr. West will be joining us for the 2023 Annual Meeting,” said AERA President Rich Milner. “Dr. West’s intellectual fight for truth and justice resonates widely throughout the world and is deeply connected to the work we all undertake as education researchers, theorists, and practitioners.”

“I can think of no other scholar more appropriate to hear from and to engage with this year’s Annual Meeting theme—"Interrogating Consequential Education Research in Pursuit of Truth,’” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “We are honored to hear and learn from Dr. West.”

West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary, where he teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in philosophy of religion, African American critical thought, and a wide range of other subjects, including the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. He is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.

West has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, examines 19th- and 20th-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies. West earned his PhD in philosophy from Princeton University

West’s lecture at the 2023 Annual Meeting will be the first-ever AERA Lateral Learning Lecture for Equity and Justice, providing attendees with an opportunity to hear from a distinguished scholar outside our field whose research has significant implications for education, education research, and the trajectories we pursue. Centering issues of equity and justice, this lecture series is designed to support education researchers in deepening their knowledge and understanding from the vantage of disciplines outside of education to advance new, innovative, and more robust research programs that advance equity and justice in education.