ABSTRACT
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was born into a petit-bourgeois Jewish family in the Algerian suburb El-Biar. At 10 years old, when the war came to Algeria, he and the other Jews were expelled from the public school system and then later (with the arrival of the allied forces) enrolled in a Jewish school. At 19 years old, he moved to France, where he began studies at the Grandes écoles preparatory program and studied phenomenology with Emmanuel LEVINAS. He taught at the École normale supérieure and the École des hautes études in Paris, and also held teaching posts at several American universities, including Johns Hopkins, New York University, and the University of California at Irvine. Throughout his career he demonstrated a strong commitment to public education, especially through his work with the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy, which advocates making philosophy a fundamental discipline in secondary school curriculum. He died of cancer in Paris in 2004.
