Cedric James Robinson (November 5, 1940 – June 5, 2016 "Office of the Chancellor, UC Santa Barbara" "In Memoriam: Cedric Robinson (1940-2016)" , University of California Humanities Research Institute, June 7, 2016. "'A Brilliant Political Theorist': David Leonard Reflects On Cedric Robinson", African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), June 8, 2016.) was an American professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He headed the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science. He served as the director of the Center for Black Studies Research. Robinson's areas of interest included classical and modern political philosophy, radical social theory in the African diaspora, comparative politics, racial capitalism, and the relationships between and among media and politics.
He became a political activist during his student days, when he protested against the university administration and American foreign and domestic policies along with other Black radical students. He was part of the Afro-American Association at Berkeley, a student group that discussed Black identity, African decolonization, historical and contemporary racism, and related topics.
Robinson's grandfather, Winston "Cap" Whiteside, influenced his radical political views. His grandfather had been forced to flee after defending his wife Cecilia, Robinson's future grandmother, from an abusive boss in their hometowns of Mobile, Alabama, and decided to go to California during the Great Migration in the 1920s. Robinson named C. L. R. James and Terence Hopkins as other thinkers who shaped his political outlook.
In 1980, trying to correct what they saw as overall media bias as well as media laziness in accepting what the White House, the US State Department, and The Pentagon said about the Third World and American relations with it, Robinson and UCSB student Corey Dubin started Third World News Review ( TWNR) on the campus and community radio station, KCSB-FM. Five years later the program became available on public access television. Since 1980, UCSB students from the Third World and other UCSB faculty members have contributed to the program, produced it, or both.
The author of five books, Robinson also had articles appear in academic journals and anthologies on subjects ranging from political thought in the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean to Western world social theory, film, and the press.
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