He ran a prison program at Norfolk State Prison as a member of the Black Panther Party and worked with Phillips Brooks House.

But was more startling was his decision to take 16 courses in his junior year. Due to financial reasons, he was forced to graduate a year early.

Such academic feats didn't go unnoticed by his professors. Thomson Professor of Government Martin L. Kilson--whom West credits with helping shape his intellectual development--says West took to his studies with "easy and early clairvoyance."

After graduating magna cum laude in Near Eastern languages, West went on to receive his masters and doctorate degrees in philosophy at Princeton University.

Since graduating from Princeton in 1980, he has taught at Yale University, Union Theological Seminary, Barnard College, Williams College.

West returned to Princeton in 1988, and currently holds joint appointments in religion and philosophy. In addition, the scholar serves as the director of Princeton's Afro-American Studies Program, which some consider to be the best in the country.

He joined the Princeton faculty at the same time his friend and colleague Toni Morrison--whom he once described as following only Herman Melville and William Faulkner in depth and sophistication in writing--accepted a position there.

West's appointment provided him with the opportunity to make his unique vision a reality and provided Princeton with the brio and brilliance of a man who has been characterized as the preeminent African-American intellectual of this generation.

West says Afro-American studies tend to be "ghettoized." To prevent this, he believes a three-tiered approach to Afro-American life and culture--in which history, anthropology and English are given primacy--will give the discipline a "larger scope for intellectual interaction" and make it peculiarly attuned to academia.

West's own work reflects this "multicontexuality." His major works include Black Theology and Marxist Thought, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism and Post-Analytic Philosophy. In addition he has written extensively on hip-hop and urban culture for the New York Times, the Boston Globe and other national journals.

Princeton vice-provost Ruth Simmons says West "has brought an interdisciplinary voice to Princeton hardly imagined possible at the time of his appointment."

"He has great vision, he is and extraordinary intellect and an extraordinary teacher," she says. "Only the capacity of the halls limit the enrollment in his classes."

West is not lacking in admirers from Harvard. The Black Students Association President Zaheer R. Ali '94 calls him "one of the very few Black intellectuals who can maintain their intellectual integrity while remaining grounded in the Black community."

"Cornel has emerged as a master of pedagogy and intellectualism, harnessing the Black ministerial demeanor reminiscent of Martin Luther King, Jr. but with the added intellectual panache," says Kilson, who was one of West's teachers.

Before Henry Louis Gates, Jr., West was asked to direct Harvard's Afro-Am Department. But West says he refused for a variety of reasons.