Yohann Ripert

Associate Professor of French, Director of the Honors Program

I believe that changing how we think is the first step toward changing how we live—so I teach, write, and create to help others make that transformation.

  • PhD, Columbia University (2017), Comparative Literature and Society
  • MPhil, MA, Columbia University (2013, 2011), French and Comparative Literature
  • BM, The Juilliard School  (2010), Piano Performance

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Yohann Ripert

Biography

Yohann Ripert is a public philosopher, academic leader, and arts entrepreneur whose work bridges the humanities, civic engagement, and creative innovation. He serves as Director of the Honors Program at Stetson University, where he has led transformative initiatives such as the Nexus Project, a national platform for student-led research, conferences, and public-facing scholarship. A former concert pianist and Juilliard graduate, Professor Ripert earned his PhD in Comparative Literature and Society from Columbia University, focusing on African Affairs, Negritude, and the Francophone World. His career spans teaching, public writing, artistic direction, and institutional leadership. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Orlando Music eXperience (OMX), an international competition and festival reimagining music education as a journey of transcendence and human potential. At the core of his work is a belief that lasting change—whether personal, cultural, or political—requires a transformation in how we think, imagine, and act.

More About Yohann Ripert

Areas of Expertise

  • Public philosophy
  • US foreign policy
  • Ideology and misinformation
  • Interdisciplinary honors education
  • Ethics of technology and AI
  • Civic and cultural leadership
  • Postcolonial and Francophone thought
  • Creative and experiential pedagogy
  • Music and the arts in intellectual formation.

Course Sampling

  • What Is a Good Life? (First-Year Seminar)
  • Leading and Living Lives That Matter (Honors Junior Seminar)
  • Ideology and the Crisis of Truth
  • Philosophy, Power, and Public Life
  • Postcolonial Literature and Political Thought
  • Creative Research Methods and Public Scholarship (Nexus)
  • Translation: In Theory and Practice
  • The Art of Interpretation: From Text to Performance
  • Music, Meaning, and the Human Experience
  • Diplomacy, Decolonization, and the Future of Independence

  • Ideology and misinformation
  • Ethics and philosophy of technology (especially AI)
  • Post-truth and the crisis of the self
  • Cultural sustainability and decolonization
  • The politics of independence and interdependence
  • Public philosophy
  • The intersection of artistic creation, civic agency, and intellectual formation.

Book(s)

  • Senghor: Writings on Politics, edition and translation of a selection of twelve speeches and essays by Léopold Sédar Senghor – (Duke University Press, Fall 2025).
  • Dictionnaire Senghor, dir. Jean-René Bourrel – (Classique Garnier, forthcoming 2026).

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • “Lyndon Johnson’s Africa: Civil Rights, Regionalism, and the U.S. Struggle to Define Freedom” – Work in Progress for Diplomatic History.
  • “When is Poetry Political? Césaire on the Role of Knowledge in 1944,” (March 2021) – Small Axe.
  • “Decolonizing Diplomacy: Senghor, Kennedy, and the Practice of Ideological Resistance.” (Spring 2021) – African Studies Review. 
  • “Beggars but not Women: False Premises and Strategies of Resistance in Aminata Sow Fall’s The Beggars’ Strike.” In Lingua Romana, Vol 14, Fall 2019, pp. 30-42.
  • “Senghor and the Enlightenment.” In Journal of African Philosophy, special issue on Léopold Sédar Senghor, Prospects and Perspectives, Spring 2015, pp. 23-36.

Other Publications

  • “Sustainable Decolonization: Aimé Césaire and the Heroes of the Haitian Revolution” in Aimé Césaire in Context, ed. Anjali Prabhu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
  • "Why Trump's Africa Summit Matters More Than You Think" in Orlando Sentinel, July 10, 2025
  • “Le Niger adopte un nouvel hymne pour refléter son imaginaire démocratique et son identité” in The Conversation – Africa, August 2, 2023.
  • “Janet Yellen’s Africa Tour: Towards a New Era for Eco-Diplomacy” in The Conversation – Africa, February 27, 2023.
  • “How Senegal Decolonized Diplomacy… to begin with John F. Kennedy and Léopold Senghor,” in The Conversation – Africa, April 4th, 2022.