Knox Lecture 2026: Tommie Shelby Solidarity, politics and intellectual life

This year's Knox Lecturer is Professor Tommie Shelby of the University of Harvard, who will be speaking on the topic of ‘Solidarity, politics and intellectual life'.

This lecture will examine what role intellectuals from oppressed groups should play in the struggle for their group's liberation. It draws on the work of W E B Du Bois and Richard Wright, canonical figures in the Black Radical tradition, to ask whether such intellectuals should subordinate their interest in art and ideas to political resistance against injustice. It also probes a deep tension between the characteristic dispositions of intellectuals and the demands of political solidarity, and it asks how, if at all, this tension might be resolved or lessened.

The Knox Lecture, officially the Sir Malcolm Knox Memorial Lecture, is given each academic year by a leading philosopher or political theorist. It is organised under the auspices of CEPPA (the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs).