Professor Lewis R. Gordon, Philosopher
photo courtesy of Simeon Gamesu Mark Cofie III
Lewis R. Gordon is an Afro-Jewish philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University. He is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy, with affiliations in Judaic Studies, Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Caribbean, Latinx, and Latin American Studies, and the Institute for Brain and Cognitive Science at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.
Gordon graduated in 1984 from Lehman College, CUNY, through the Lehman Scholars Program, with a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Sigma Alpha. He completed his Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy degrees in philosophy in 1991 at Yale University and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree with distinction from the same university in 1993. Following the completion of his doctoral studies, Gordon taught at Purdue University, Brown University, and Temple University, where he was the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy with affiliations in Religious, Judaic Studies, and the School of Music and Dance.
At Temple, he was Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought (ISRST), which is devoted to research on the complexity and social dimensions of race and racism. The ISRST’s many projects include developing a consortium on Afro-Latin American Studies, a Philadelphia Blues People Project, semiological studies of indigeneity, a Black Civil Society project, symposia on race, sexuality, and sexual health, and ongoing work in Africana philosophy. Gordon was Executive Editor of volumes I-V of Radical Philosophy Review: Journal of the Radical Philosophy Association and co-editor of the Routledge book series on Africana philosophy. Additionally, he was President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association from 2003–2008.
Gordon was the founder of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, the only such research center, which focused on developing and providing reliable sources of information on African and African Diasporic Jewish or Hebrew-descended populations. The center organized conferences on Jewish diversity, collaborated with Jews of color organizations worldwide, and mentored doctoral students in the study of Afro-Jewish life and thought. Gordon also founded the Second Chance Program at Lehman High School in the Bronx, New York. That program was devoted to providing mentorship, creative pedagogy and curricula, and counseling for in-school truants to complete their high school diplomas.
Gordon’s research in philosophy is in Africana philosophy, philosophy of existence, phenomenology, social and political philosophy, philosophy of culture, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of science. In addition to theories of social transformation, decolonization, and liberation, Gordon’s research in social and political philosophy also addresses problems of normative political concerns beyond justice.
In addition to his role at UCONN-Storrs, Gordon serves as Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies; Visiting Professor in Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, where he is also now a Distinguished Scholar at The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy; Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa; Adjunct Professor at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa; European Union Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France; and Honorary Professor in the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa, where he was formerly the Nelson Mandela Distinguished Visiting Chair in Political and International. As a public intellectual, Gordon has written for a variety of political forums, newspapers, and magazines and has lectured across the globe, founded and co-founded several book series, journals and organizations. He also participates in several international research groups.
Published works:
Gordon has produced approximately 400 articles, book chapters, and reviews. Books by Gordon currently in print are:
- Fear of Black Consciousness (Farrar, Straus, Giroux and Penguin Random House, 2022)
- Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge 2021)
- Geopolitics and Decolonization: Perspectives from the Global South (ed. with Fernanda Frizzo Bragato) (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018)
- La sud prin nord-vest: Reflecţii existenţiale afrodiasporice, trans. Ovidiu Tichindeleanu (Cluj, Romania: IDEA Design & Print, 2016)
- Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader (ed. with Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis R. Gordon, Aaron Kamugisha, and Neil Roberts) (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016)
- What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to his Life and Thought (Fordham University Press, 2015). Selected as Book of the Week in the Financial Mail (South Africa, December 17, 2015).
- La teoría política en la encrucijada descolonial, with Walter Mignolo, Alejandro de Oto, and Sylvia Wynter (Del Signo ediciones, 2009)
- Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age, with Jane Gordon (Paradigm Publishers, 2009)
- An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
- Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm Publishers, 2006)
- A Companion to African American Studies (ed. with Jane Anna Gordon) (Blackwell, 2006). NetLibrary’s e-book of the month for February 2007.
- Not Only the Master’s Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (ed. with Jane Anna Gordon) (Paradigm Publishers, 2005)
- Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Routledge, 2000)
- Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). Winner of Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America.
- Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, (ed.) (Routledge, 1997)
- Fanon: A Critical Reader (ed. with T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Renée T. White) (Blackwell, 1996)
- Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Routledge, 1995)
- Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanity Books, 1995/1999)