Rate My Professor Darien Pollock

Darien Pollock serves as Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Boston University Department of Philosophy, College of Arts & Sciences, a position he assumed in Summer 2022. He holds an additional affiliation with the University's African American & Black Diaspora Studies program. Pollock earned his PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University in 2022 and completed his undergraduate degree in Philosophy at Morehouse College. Originating from Marianna, Florida—a rural town known as the birthplace of Black abolitionist T. Thomas Fortune and site of the 1934 lynching of Claude Neal—Pollock draws inspiration from his family's activist heritage, including his mother's involvement in 1970s and 1980s movements in Newark and New York, and his grandmother's community improvement efforts for Black residents.

Pollock's research specializes in street knowledge, a philosophy derived from lived experiences that drives bottom-up social change through creative street culture. In his book Street Knowledge: The Hidden Ways Social Change Happens (Princeton University Press, 2026), he contends that marginal actors employ street knowledge to legitimize ideas challenging civic injustice, cultural hegemony, and economic exploitation, rendering them meaningful to the public. Pollock traces a street orientation in academic philosophy, citing Plato's Republic, Marx, W.E.B. DuBois, Derrida, Socrates, and John Lewis's notion of "good trouble." His scholarship extends to African philosophy, examining post-colonial issues like the adequacy of Western theories for indigenous languages such as Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo. Key publications include "Political action, epistemic detachment, and the problem of white-mindedness" in Philosophical Issues (2021). In 2024, Pollock received the Pskowski Humanities Junior Faculty Research Fund Award supporting his research project. He founded the Street Philosophy Institute, a nonprofit initiated after the 2016 election, which deploys philosophical methods for community initiatives including felon voting rights restoration in Florida, "Racial Healing in Florida" for youth education on suppressed histories, post-Hurricane Michael relief targeting Black communities, and voter registration drives across Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.