Tommie Shelby

Apr 1, 2024 | christiancentury.org | Tommie Shelby |Peter W. Marty |Emmy Brett |Timothy Adkins-Jones

In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Harvard philosopher Tommie Shelby asks whether incarceration can ever be just, either in an unjust world such as ours or in a fully just society. He shows his cards early, writing on page 4 that after using all the philosophical tools in his toolbox, he favors prison reform over abolition, believing that there is a way in which prisons can be just. I do not come to the same conclusion, even after reading Shelby’s book twice.

Feb 7, 2024 | academic.oup.com | Tommie Shelby

Equally conversant in the tradition of black American thought and contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy, Tommie Shelby is one of those rare scholars who calls two academic islands home and has spent his career building bridges between them. Following ground-breaking monographs on the foundations of black solidarity and the justice-related implications of black ghettos, Shelby has published The Idea of Prison Abolition based on his 2018 Carl G. Hempel Lectures at Princeton.