#  Tommie Shelby 

Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy, Harvard University

Chair, African and African American Studies

 

 

 



   ![Tommie Shelby](/sites/g/files/omnuum9911/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2025-04/shelby-color-2022_orig.jpeg?itok=XtJMkQ4t) 

 



 

 laptop\_windows [Harvard University Profile](http://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/people/tommie-shelby) 

 

 



 

Professor Shelby is Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University. He 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 focus on racial and economic justice and on the history of black political thought.

Professor Shelby is the author of *Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform* (Belknap, 2016) and *We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity* (Belknap, 2005). He is coeditor (with Brandon M. Terry) of *To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.* (Belknap, 2018), and (with Derrick Darby) of *Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason* (Open Court, 2005).

Other recent publications include:

“Freedom in a Godless and Unhappy World: Wright as Outsider,” in *The Cambridge Companion to Richard Wright*, ed. Glenda R. Carpio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 121-138.

“Richard Wright: Realizing the Promise of the West,” in *African American Political Thought: A Collected History*, ed. Melvin Rogers and Jack Turner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

“Prisons of the Forgotten: Ghettos and Economic Injustice,” in *To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.*, ed. Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), pp. 187-204.

“Justification, Learning, and Human Flourishing,” in Danielle Allen, *Education and Equality* (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), pp. 51-61.

“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 S. Light (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 59-79.

“Liberalism, Self-Respect, and Troubling Cultural Patterns in Ghettos,” in *The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, ed. Orlando Patterson and Ethan Fosse* (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), pp. 498-532.

“Inequality, Integration, and Imperatives of Justice: A Review Essay,” *Philosophy & Public Affairs* 42 (Summer 2014): 253-285.

“Racism, Moralism, and Social Criticism,” *Du Bois Review* 11.1 (2014): 57-74.

“Racial Realities and Corrective Justice: A Reply to Charles Mills,” *Critical Philosophy of Race* 1.2 (2013): 145-162.

“Race” in *The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy*, ed. David Estlund (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 336-353.

“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.

He is also the coeditor of the journal *Transition*.

*Professor Shelby has been a Faculty Associate of the Ethics Center since 2004, and was a Senior Scholar in Ethics in 2009-2010.*



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Current Role
    
     [Faculty Committee](/current-role/faculty-committee)