Prof Kwame Anthony Appiah
ACADEMIC
Prof Kwame Anthony Appiah is a British-born American philosopher, novelist and scholar of African and African American studies, best known for his contributions to political philosophy, moral psychology and the philosophy of culture. Appiah is the son of Joseph Appiah, a Ghanaian-born barrister, and Peggy Cripps, daughter of the British statesman Sir Stafford Cripps. He attended Bryanston School and later Clare College, University of Cambridge, where he earned a PhD in philosophy in 1982. He taught philosophy, African studies, and African American studies at Yale University (1981–86), Cornell University (1986–89), Duke University (1990–91) and Harvard University (1999–2002). In 2002 he joined the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he stayed until moving to New York University in 2014. Appiah’s early writings concerned the philosophy of language. He turned his attention to political and cultural issues in In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford University Press, 1992), a philosophical exploration of the nature of African identity in the West and in an increasingly global culture. Appiah’s other non-fiction books include Experiments in Ethics (Harvard University Press, 2008), The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (W W Norton & Co, 2010), and The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity (Liveright, 2018). He also wrote the novels Avenging Angel (St Martins Pr, 1991), Nobody Likes Letitia (Constable, 1994), and Another Death in Venice (Constable, 1995).
