Cornel West, a progressive activist, and scholar, announced a bid for the White House on the same day former Vice President Mike Pence announced that he is running for the Republican nomination for president against his old boss former President Donald Trump.

“I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself — fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education, and living wages,†West said.

He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best-known book is Race Matters.

Dr. Cornel West, affectionately known to many as Brother West, is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary.

Dr. West teaches the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in philosophy of religion, African American critical thought, and a broad range of subjects — including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music.

He has a passion to communicate with a wide and diverse number of people in order to keep alive the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.

Dr. West is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Cornel West graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in three years and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton.