Williams College Professor Neil Roberts Elected President of Caribbean Philosophical Association

Neil Roberts, chair of religion and associate professor of Africana studies at Williams College, has been elected president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA). He will begin his term in January 2017.

The CPA is an international organization of scholars, artists, and community activists dedicated to articulating a place for ideas in the Caribbean context and their global significance. It aims to “shift the geography of reason” away from solely First World nations by demonstrating how theoretical investigations and critical scholarship forged within the Caribbean and the global south shape interpretations of regional and global challenges faced by humans in the 21st century.

As president, Roberts will foster these ideals of the CPA. Roberts plans to expand the CPA’s social media presence and increase the number of events it holds each year outside of its annual meeting. In particular, he will further the CPA Summer School initiative, which helps the organization identify the next generation of scholars and activists working in the field of Caribbean thought. Roberts says he has benefitted from the organization’s past presidents and accepted the nomination in the hopes of helping the organization grow and transform. “Leadership should not be confused with hierarchy,” he says. A lack of barriers to entry and exclusionary hierarchy within the organization results in “the quality of intellectual engagement at CPA annual conferences and related events by all of its members [being] simply outstanding.”

Roberts received a B.A. in Afro-American studies and law & public policy from Brown University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science, with a specialization in political theory, from the University of Chicago. A high school teacher, debate coach, and NCAA Division 1 soccer player before he attended graduate school, Roberts has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. He is a member of the CPA’s board of directors and has been a member of the CPA since its founding in Jamaica nearly 15 years ago. Prior to his election as president, he served as the first secretary of graduate students and as chair of CPA publishing partnerships.

His research involves the intersections of Caribbean, Continental, and North American political theory with respect to theorizing the concepts of freedom and agency. His works appear in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, C.L.R. James Journal, Journal of Haitian Studies, Karib, New Political Science, Patterns of Prejudice, Philosophia Africana, Political Theory, and an anthology devoted to the work of Sylvia Wynter, among others. Roberts is co-editor of both the CAS Working Papers Series in Africana Studies and a collection of essays titled Creolizing Rousseau, and he is the guest editor of a Theory & Event symposium on the Trayvon Martin case. He is the author most recently of Freedom as Marronage. Currently, Roberts is working on A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass, the collaborative work Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader, and a monograph on Rastafari political theology.

December 8, 2015