Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values, has been elected president of the PEN American Center, the 3,400-member association of literary writers, editors and translators.
"I am very honored to have been elected to the PEN presidency," Appiah said. "Everything we do flows from the central mission we share with PEN centers around the planet, and that is to work together to sustain the literary cultures of the world."
Appiah succeeds the noted novelist, short story writer and essayist Francine Prose as head of the PEN American Center.
A Princeton faculty member since 2002, Appiah is an internationally renowned scholar of moral and political philosophy, African and African American studies, and issues of personal and political identity, multiculturalism and nationalism.
He is the author of numerous award-winning books, including "Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers," "The Ethics of Identity" and "Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race." His latest book, "Experiments in Ethics," explores how the new empirical moral psychology relates to the age-old project of philosophical ethics.
The PEN American Center is the U.S. arm of the world's oldest international literary and human rights organization. International PEN, which was founded in 1921, works for the advancement of literature, the defense of free expression and the promotion of international literary fellowship.
