Tommie Shelby

Interests: Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, social theory, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tommie Shelby is Lee Simpkins Family Professor of Arts and Sciences and Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy. He received his B.A. from Florida A & M University (1990) and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh (1998). Prior to coming to Harvard in 2000, he taught philosophy at The Ohio State University (1996-2000).

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 Brandon M. Terry coedited To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harvard University Press, 2018). He and Derrick Darby coedited Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason (Open Court, 2005). 

Shelby’s most recent book is The Idea of Prison Abolition (Princeton University Press, 2022), which 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, Criminal Law and Philosophy, Journal of Social Philosophy, 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 delivered the Carl G. Hempel Lectures at Princeton University (2018); the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford University (2022); and the Walter Benjamin Lectures at Humboldt University in Berlin (2025).

Shelby is 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.