George Yancy

George Dewey Yancy (born June 3, 1961) is an American philosopher who is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University.

He is a distinguished Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, one of the college's highest honors.

Yancy received his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh cum laude in 1985, his M.A. in philosophy from Yale University in 1987, his M.A. in Africana studies from New York University (NYU) in 2004, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Duquesne University with distinction in 2005.

He began teaching at Duquesne in 2005, progressing from assistant professor to full professor in eight years, 2005–2013.

At "Academic Influence," Yancy has been called one of the top 10 influential philosophers in the decade spanning 2010–2020, due in part to the number of citations and web presence.

After teaching at Duquesne for ten years, he moved to teach philosophy at Emory University in 2015.

As an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, Yancy wrote his undergraduate honors thesis on Bertrand Russell's Sense Data theory.

His honors thesis was directed by American philosopher and epistemologist Wilfrid Sellars.

Also at Pitt, he studied Kant under Nicholas Rescher, studied with Adolf Grunbaum on Freud's theory of religion, studied Martin Heidegger under John Haugeland, and took a graduate seminar on Plato taught by Mary Louise Gill, and modern philosophy under Annette Baier.

Yancy also took a course entitled Human Nature taught by prominent political theorist John W. Chapman, which explored questions of human nature from Plato to Marx, Sartre, Freud and Skinner.

While at Yale University, he took graduate seminars with eminent philosophers such as John Edwin Smith (on pragmatism), Maurice Natanson (on the thought of Alfred Schutz), Rulon Wells (on the philosophy of G. W. Leibniz), and others.

While at New York University, Yancy took a seminar on democracy with political and economic theorist Leonard Wantchekon, a Black history course with historian Robert Hinton, and a seminar with poet Kamau Brathwaite in which Yancy was exposed to surrealism, magical realism, and radical decolonial ways to rethink W. Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The Consortium that existed between NYU and Columbia University allowed Yancy to enroll in a seminar on Gender and the Diaspora taught by cultural anthropologist Donna Daniels at Columbia University.

Yancy also wrote his MA thesis under the direction of Columbia University's comparative literary theorist Farah Griffin.

While at Duquesne University, Yancy wrote his dissertation on race and embodiment under philosopher Fred Evans.

In 2015 Yancy published an article in the New York Times' philosophy column, The Stone, entitled "Dear White America".

The article generated considerable controversy, resulting in him receiving large amounts of hate mail and harassment.

This experience later helped convince the American Philosophical Association to issue a statement denouncing bullying and harassment.

It also resulted in Yancy being added to the Professor Watchlist, a website which purports to document anti-conservative college professors, in 2016.

He received over 1,000 messages of support.

68 philosophers and intellectuals signed a letter in his defense, supporting his freedom and the freedom of others to engage in philosophical discussions regarding major social and political issues.

In response to being placed on the Professor Watchlist, Yancy wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times entitled "I am a Dangerous Professor."

Yancy has been interviewed on various radio stations throughout the U.S. He has also appeared in two documentaries, the six-episode series Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story (2018), and Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence (2019).

In 2019–20, he was the University of Pennsylvania's Inaugural Provost's Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow.

He is the editor for Lexington Books' "Philosophy of Race" book series.

He is known for his work in critical whiteness studies, critical philosophy of race, critical phenomenology (especially racial embodiment), and African American philosophy, and has written, edited, or co-edited more than 20 books.

In his capacity as an academic scholar and a public intellectual, he has published over 200 combined scholarly articles, chapters, and interviews that have appeared in professional journals, books, and at various news sites.

Yancy has authored numerous essays and conducted interviews at both The New York Times' philosophy column "The Stone," and at Truthout.

Additionally, he has published at CounterPunch, The Guardian, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.