In partnership with the Berkshire County NAACP, and in celebration of the 150th birthday of Berkshire County native W. E. B. Du Bois, Professor Neil Roberts of Williams College will deliver his talk "W.E.B. Du Bois and Political Thought in the Shadow of Frederick Douglass."
Neil Roberts received his Ph.D. in Political Science from The University of Chicago with a specialization in political theory. A high school teacher, debate coach, and NCAA Division 1 soccer player at Brown University prior to graduate school, Roberts is the recipient of fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation as well as a member of the Caribbean Philosophical Association Board of Directors. His present writings deal with the intersections of Caribbean, Continental, and North American political theory with respect to theorizing the concept of freedom. He is the author of published and forthcoming articles, reviews, and book chapters in The Cambridge Dictionary of Political Thought, Caribbean Studies, Clamor magazine, The C.L.R. James Journal, Daily Nous, Encyclopedia of Political Theory, Journal of Haitian Studies, Karib, New Political Science, Patterns of Prejudice, Perspectives on Politics, Philosophia Africana, Philosophy in Review/Comptes Rendus Philosophiques, Political Theory, Sartre Studies International, Shibboleths, Small Axe, Souls, and an anthology devoted to the thought of Sylvia Wynter. Roberts is co-editor of both the CAS Working Papers in Africana Studies Series (with Ben Vinson) and a collection of essays (with Jane Anna Gordon) on the theme Creolizing Rousseau (2015), and he is the recent guest editor of a Theory & Event symposium on the Trayvon Martin case. In addition to being on the Executive Editorial Board of Political Theory and former Chair of CPA Publishing Partnerships that includes The C.L.R. James Journal and books with Rowman and Littlefield International, he is author of the award-winning book Freedom as Marronage (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and the collaborative work Journeys in Caribbean Thought (2016). His most recent book, A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass (2018), is forthcoming from The University Press of Kentucky. Roberts is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (2017-) and, as of July 1, 2018, the W. Ford Schumann Faculty Fellow in Democratic Studies.