John McWhorter

John H. McWhorter is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He earned his B.A. from Rutgers, his M.A. from New York University, and his Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford. Professor McWhorter has taught the American Studies seminar “Language in America,” a study of American linguistic history that considered Native American languages, immigrant languages, Creole languages, and Black English—their development, interactions, and preservation. He has also taught the seminar “Language Contact,” which focused specifically on the mixture of languages in North America and studied the development of creoles, pidgins, koines, “vehicular” languages, and nonstandard dialects. The seminar considered the perceived legitimacy of languages and the standing of language mixtures in media and education. Professor McWhorter is the author of more than twenty books, including “Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America,” and “Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America.” He has written for many publications, including the New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.