Dr. Derrick Darby (Sage/Fearless Watcher)
Dr. Derrick Darby is a Henry Rutgers professor of philosophy. He holds a B. A. from Colgate and a Ph.D. from Pittsburgh. He is the founding director of the Rutgers Social Justice Solutions Research Collaboratory and also directs its renowned Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy.
Dr. Darby discovered his passion for philosophy growing up in the Queensbridge public housing projects in Long Island City, NY. For the backstory see his TEDx talk, aptly titled “Doing the Knowledge.” In social and political philosophy, he writes about rights, inequality, and democracy. He thinks about how race and racism bear on theoretical, normative and practical philosophical questions. His books include: Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme to Reason (Open Court, 2005) with Tommie Shelby; Rights, Race, and Recognition (Cambridge, 2009); and The Color of Mind: Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matter for Justice with John L. Rury (Chicago, 2018). His scholarship has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Dr. Darby is currently writing about W. E. B. Du Bois’s democratic theory and how it bears on questions of social, economic, and global justice. He is completing a book on 20th century black radical political thought with Dr. Christian Davenport. It has chapters on W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Claudia Jones, Martin Luther King, Jr., Imari Obadele, and Angela Davis. And he is writing about democracy and social identities with his former student Dr. Eduardo Martinez.
Dr. Darby discovered his passion for philosophy growing up in the Queensbridge public housing projects in Long Island City, NY. For the backstory see his TEDx talk, aptly titled “Doing the Knowledge.” In social and political philosophy, he writes about rights, inequality, and democracy. He thinks about how race and racism bear on theoretical, normative and practical philosophical questions. His books include: Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme to Reason (Open Court, 2005) with Tommie Shelby; Rights, Race, and Recognition (Cambridge, 2009); and The Color of Mind: Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matter for Justice with John L. Rury (Chicago, 2018). His scholarship has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Dr. Darby is currently writing about W. E. B. Du Bois’s democratic theory and how it bears on questions of social, economic, and global justice. He is completing a book on 20th century black radical political thought with Dr. Christian Davenport. It has chapters on W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Claudia Jones, Martin Luther King, Jr., Imari Obadele, and Angela Davis. And he is writing about democracy and social identities with his former student Dr. Eduardo Martinez.
Prof. Christian Davenport (Science/Bittah Ninja)
Christian Davenport is a Professor of Political Science and Faculty Associate at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and Elected Fellow at the American Association for the Arts and Sciences. Primary research interests include political conflict, measurement, racism and popular culture. He is the author of seven books. Dr. Davenport is the author of numerous articles appearing in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Annual Review of Political Science, the American Sociological Review, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Peace Research, Mobilization, Conflict Management and Peace Science and the Monthly Review (among others). He is the recipient of numerous grants (e.g., 10 from the National Science Foundation as well as a Toppforsk from the Research Council Norway) and awards (e.g., the Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar Award and a Residential Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences – Stanford University). Dr. Davenport is also engaged in various data collection efforts, developing crowd-sourcing data collection programs and co-organizing workshops/conferences/webportals facilitating the development of conflict/peace studies. For more information, please refer to the following webpage: www.christiandavenport.com.