Prolific writer, Princeton professor and American moral philosopher Cornel West will headline Virginia Tech's 2010 Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, the university announced Wednesday.

West is scheduled to give the keynote address for the university's fifth annual commemoration of King at 7 p.m. Jan. 18 in Burruss Hall Auditorium.

Admission is free, but tickets are required to attend. They are available at Squires Student Center from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday or online at www.uusa.vt.edu.

West gained fame with the publication in 1993 of "Race Matters," in which he analyzed the effects of systematic racism on American democracy -- a recurring theme in many of the 20 books West has written.

"The fundamental litmus test for American democracy ... remains: how broad and intense are the arbitrary powers used and deployed against black people. In this sense, the problem of the twenty-first century remains the problem of the color line," West wrote in the preface to the 2001 reissue of "Race Matters."

The book is considered a contemporary classic and has sold more than 500,000 copies.

West has collaborated with Henry Louis Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and consulted on and appeared in the "Matrix" film trilogy starring Keanu Reeves.

West taught religion and African American studies at Princeton from 1988 to 1994, before taking a position at Harvard. He returned to Princeton in 2002.

West's January talk is sponsored by the Tech Office for Equity and Inclusion and Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Previous MLK celebration speakers on campus include the Rev. Jesse Jackson and poet Maya Angelou.