Paul Robert and Jean Shuman Hanna Lectures in Philosophy

36th Annual Lectures: Doing the Right Thing

Guest lecturer Tommie Shelby, Lee Simpkins Family Professor of Arts and Sciences, and Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and Philosophy at Harvard University, delivered two lectures on April 3 and 4:

  • Resisting Racial Stereotypes
  • Intellectual Freedom and Political Ethics of the Oppressed: Lessons from Richard Wright

About the 2025 guest lecturer

Tommie Shelby is the author of Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform (Harvard University Press, 2016), which won the Spitz Prize from the Conference for the Study of Political Thought and the 2016 Book Award from the North American Society for Social Philosophy. He is also the author of We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Harvard University Press, 2005). He and Derrick Darby coedited Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (Open Court, 2005). Shelby and Brandon M. Terry coedited To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harvard University Press, 2018).

Shelby’s most recent book is The Idea of Prison Abolition (Princeton University Press, 2022), which is based on his 2018 Carl G. Hempel Lectures at Princeton University. The book was co-winner of the Easton Award from the Foundations of Political Thought section of the American Political Science Association.

Shelby’s writings focus on racial justice, economic justice, and criminal justice and on the history of black political thought. His numerous articles have appeared in journals such as Philosophy & Public Affairs, Ethics, Political Theory, Critical Inquiry, Du Bois Review, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Daedalus. He has also contributed to The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, Boston Review, The Root, Jacobin, The Point, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Shelby is a former co-editor of Transition, a literary and cultural magazine with a focus on Africa and its Diaspora. He has served as the President of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 

Tommie Shelby Harvard University

Tommie Shelby, Lee Simpkins Family Professor of Arts and Sciences, and Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and Philosophy at Harvard University

About the Hanna Lectures in philosophy

The Paul Robert and Jean Shuman Hanna Lectureship in philosophy was created in 1982 to bring a distinguished teacher and scholar in philosophy, of national or international reputation, to Hamline University. The donors desired that the Hanna Lectures serve as a memorial to their experience with Professor Gregory Dexter Walcott, their philosophy teacher during their days at Hamline University. Explore the philosophy bachelor's degree program at Hamline.

Past Hanna Lectures (1982–present)

2019 Charles W. Mills, City University of New York
2018 Peter Adamson, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
2017 Nancy Tuana, Pennsylvania State University
2016 Linda Martin Alcoff, Hunter College
2015 Elisabeth Lloyd, Indiana University
2014 Leonard Lawlor, Pennsylvania State University
2013 Bas Van Fraassen, Princeton University
2012 Duane L. Cady, Hamline University
2011 Robert L. Holmes, University of Rochester
2010 Nancy Tuana, Pennsylvania State University
2009 Larry May, Vanderbilt University
2008 Lorraine Code, York University
2007 Arthur Fine, University of Washington
2006 Amitai Etzioni, George Washington University
2005 Lucius T. Outlaw (Jr.), Vanderbilt University
2004 Richard Bernstein, New School University
2003 bell hooks
2002–2003 Alison Jaggar, University of Colorado at Boulder
2001–2002 Evelyn Fox Keller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1999–2000 Kwasi Wiredu, University of South Florida
1998–1999 Marilyn Frye, Michigan State University
1997–1998 Hilary Putnam, Harvard University
1996–1997 Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1995–1996 Kwame Anthony Appiah, Harvard University
1994–1995 Margaret Wilson, Princeton University
1993–1994 Cornel West, Princeton University
1991 Arthur Danto, Columbia University
1990 Martha Nussbaum, Brown University
1989 Roderick M. Chisholm, Brown University
1988 Hubert L. Dreyfus, University of California, Berkeley
1987 Alan Donagan, California Institute of Technology 1987
1986 Hamline University
1985 Richard Wasserstrom, University of California, Santa Cruz
1984 Huston Smith, Syracuse University
1983 Hippocrates Apostle, Grinnell College
1982 Milton C. Nahm, Bryn Mawr College

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