Critical Race Theory Across Borders
with Michael L. Thomas,
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam
and
Benedict Kenyah-Damptey,
PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Thursday, February 6, 2025 | 6:30 p.m.
FORUM Volkshochschule im Museum am Neumarkt | Cäcilienstr. 29-33 | 50667 Köln
Join us in exploring the history, key tenets, and contemporary relevance of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Our experts will examine the origins of CRT in the U.S. legal and academic contexts and outline core positions within CRT, including the call to actively challenge institutional racism and to reconsider laws and policies that perpetuate racial disparities. Based on their comparative research on how people in the U.S. and Germany understand the concepts of “race” and “Rasse”, they will also debate whether CRT’s insights can be effectively applied in the German context and whether German anti-racist movements should retain, reshape, or abandon the fraught term “Rasse” altogether. We are looking forward to discussing how research within the CRT framework can enrich the current discourse on addressing racism in Germany together with our experts:
Michael L. Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Critical Cultural Theory capacity group at the University of Amsterdam. He has held positions as a Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the JFK Institute for North American Studies at the Freie University Berlin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and coordinator of Africana Studies at Susquehanna University, and a Postdoctoral Lecturer in Structured Liberal Education at Stanford University, among others. He specializes in work in Social Aesthetics, an investigation of aesthetic dimensions of social life. He has published work in the Critical Philosophy of Race, Philosophy and Literature, American Studies, Social Theory, Political Theory, Speculative Philosophy, and most recently Band Research. In each of these arenas, he uses aesthetic feeling, art and media objects, or reflections on aesthetic theory to analyze sociological processes and their implications in the search for novel ways of organizing “social life.”
Benedict Kenyah-Damptey is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, focusing on the intersection of embodiment, emotions, empathy, and dehumanization. His research examines how social categories shape perceptions of others and predispose people to discriminatory behaviors, particularly racial dehumanization. Drawing on insights from the cognitive sciences and social psychology, his philosophical work explores how dehumanizing perceptions hinder empathy and affect moral judgments, leading to the exclusion of certain groups from moral consideration. Benedict’s academic interests include 4E Cognition, the philosophy of race, social affordances, empathy, philosophy of psychology, and feminism. He also co-leads the participatory experimental philosophy project "Rasse – Negotiating a Fraught German Term" alongside Dr. Leda Berio and Dr. Daniel James. Funded by the Citizens' University Düsseldorf, the project compares concepts of race in Germany and the U.S., working closely with anti-racist organizations to explore whether the term "Rasse" should be redefined or abandoned in German discourse.
We cordially thank our partners for their cooperation:
