Charles Mills to speak on "Liberalism and Racial Justice"

Photo Credit: Charles_Mills_portrait
January 10, 2018

On Thursday, January 18, 2018, Dr. Charles Mills, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, will present the Cedric Evans Memorial Lecture. His topic is “Liberalism and Racial Justice.” The talk is scheduled for 4:00 pm at the Nebraska City Campus Union, Colonial Rooms A and B. This event is free and open to the public.
The influential philosopher Charles Mills has made a career of questioning mainstream philosophy and political theory, holding that orthodox political philosophy is underpinned by deep racial bias. His work challenges central philosophical and political figures such as David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, and John Rawls, in addition to many other contemporary social justice theorists. Mills argues that racism has shaped the theory of liberalism from the beginning, resulting in “racial liberalism.” Although liberalism in modernity has been shaped by European domination, Mills feels that a liberalism which is sensitive to racial injustice is nonetheless possible and desirable.
Mills is the author of The Racial Contract (1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (1998), From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (2003), Contract and Domination (with Carole Pateman) (2007), Radical Theory, Caribbean Reality: Race, Class and Social Domination (2010), and Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism (2017).
This event is sponsored by the Departments of Philosophy and Sociology, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the Convocations Committee, and the Evans Memorial Lectureship Fund.