This post, the first of my now regular Friday posts, serves as my reflections on the first plenary of the Third Annual U.S. Intellectual Conference, on Renewing Black Intellectual History. Adolph Reed, Jr., Kenneth Warren, and Dean Robinson were the panelists. To be quite honest, the session got off to a slower start than I anticipated. Being quite familiar with the work of Reed, the first speaker, I expected his usual brilliant polemics. Instead, he patiently discussed the origins of the collection Renewing Black Intellectual History, which he edited alongside his friend Warren. It seems that the book arose from Read more