Ifeanyi Menkiti

Born in Onitsha, Nigeria, Ifeanyi Menkiti came to the U.S. in 1961 to attend Pomona College and later earned a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard, where he studied under political philosopher John Rawls. He published his first volume of poetry in 1971 and two years later became a professor of philosophy at Wellesley College. “There are a lot of problems in the world,” Menkiti told a reporter in 2011. “To think that philosophy and literature don’t have anything to do with fixing them is wrongheaded.”