Black scholar Cornel West announces he’s running for U.S. president

Historian and Philosophy professor Cornel West announced Monday that he is running for president in the 2024 election. The 70-year-old scholar disclosed in a video on Twitter that he is running as a candidate for the People’s Party, adding that he had “decided to run for truth and justice”.

“I come from a tradition where I care about you,” West said in the video. “I care about the quality of your life, I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, healthcare for all, de-escalating the destruction of the planet.”

Some of the activist’s policies outlined on his campaign website include stopping all foreign military aid, banning Nato, abolishing student debt, and introducing Medicare for All. He would also dwell on fighting to end poverty and mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, and guaranteeing housing.

West, who is now a professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary, previously taught at Princeton, Yale and Harvard. He is against both Democrats and Republicans and in 2016, he threw his weight behind then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. A progressive political activist, West’s works have focused on race and class in U.S. society.

West’s announcement on Monday comes weeks after Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, announced that he would be running for president. On Monday, former Vice President Mike Pence also launched his campaign. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are running again.