Rate My Professor Kipton Jensen

Kipton E. Jensen, Ph.D., is an associate professor of philosophy at Morehouse College, holding the Coca-Cola Endowed Chair of Leadership Studies. He currently directs the Higher Education in Prisons Program in the Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership, having previously served as director of the Leadership Studies Program from 2020 to 2024 and assistant director of the International Comparative Labor Studies Program. Jensen received a B.A. in classical languages from the University of Nebraska and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Marquette University in 1996. Prior to Morehouse, he taught philosophy at the University of Botswana from 2004 to 2008, where his research on traditional healers and faith communities' roles in public health led to the publication Parallel Discourses: Religious Identity and HIV Prevention in Botswana (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012). He was also a Fulbright Scholar in American Studies at Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, in 2000–2001, and received the Fulbright Teaching Fellow award in 2000 and the Teaching Excellence Award in 1998.

Jensen's academic interests include the philosophy of education, philosophy of religion, history of philosophy, civil rights, and the search for common ground, with focused scholarship on Howard Thurman and the social justice leadership legacy at Morehouse College. Since joining the institution, he has published five books, including Howard Thurman: Philosophy, Civil Rights, and the Search for Common Ground (University of South Carolina Press, 2019); Sermons on the Parables by Howard Thurman, edited with David B. Gowler (Orbis Books, 2018); Hegel: Hovering (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011); Preston King: History, Toleration, and Friendship, edited by Jensen (Peter Lang, 2021); and a forthcoming co-edited volume, Der Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie on 19th-century American and British philosophy (Schwabe Verlag, 2025). He has also contributed articles such as “Howard Thurman and the African American Resistance Tradition” in Concerned Philosophers for Peace (Brill, 2021) and numerous pieces on Thurman and Morehouse's leadership tradition.