Author Appiah to give MLK lecture Jan. 27

Author Appiah to give MLK lecture Jan. 27

Philosopher and author K. Anthony Appiah will be the featured speaker at the next President’s Lecture, set for Jan. 27. Titled “The Diversity of Identity,” the talk will be the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture and will be at 8 p.m. in Grand Hall, Rice Memorial Center.

Appiah studies African and African-American intellectual history and literary studies, ethics and philosophy of mind and language and African traditional religions. He is the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

Born in London, Appiah grew up in Ghana and was educated at Cambridge University in England, earning a doctorate in philosophy. In 1985, Cambridge University Press published his revised dissertation, “Assertion and Conditionals,” followed by a second book, “For Truth in Semantics.” Appiah has taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard and lectured at many other institutions around the world. He joined Princeton in 2002.

Appiah is the author or co-author of “In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture,” “Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race” and “Bu Me Bé: Akan Proverbs” as well as an introduction to contemporary philosophy titled “Thinking It Through.” His newest book, “The Ethics of Identity,” was published by Princeton University Press in December. He also edited the “Dictionary of Global Culture” with Henry Louis Gates Jr., as well as the Encarta Africana CD-ROM, which was published in book form as the Perseus Africana Encyclopedia.

The President’s Lecture Series is open to the public and sponsored by the Office of the President. For more information, visit the Web at <www.rice.edu/pls/> or call 713-348-5585.