ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/cornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html#after-top>
Cornel West Is Leaving Harvard After Tenure Dispute
The public intellectual and professor of African-American studies will
head to Union Theological Seminary in New York.
*
<https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=9869919170&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F03%2F08%2Fus%2Fcornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html%3Fsmid%3Dfb-share&name=Cornel%20West%20Is%20Leaving%20Harvard%20After%20Tenure%20Dispute&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F>
*
<https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=Cornel%20West%20Is%20Leaving%20Harvard%20After%20Tenure%20Dispute%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F03%2F08%2Fus%2Fcornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html%3Fsmid%3Dwa-share>
*
<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F03%2F08%2Fus%2Fcornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html%3Fsmid%3Dtw-share&text=Cornel%20West%20Is%20Leaving%20Harvard%20After%20Tenure%20Dispute>
*
<mailto:?subject=NYTimes.com%3A%20Cornel%20West%20Is%20Leaving%20Harvard%20After%20Tenure%20Dispute&body=From%20The%20New%20York%20Times%3A%0A%0ACornel%20West%20Is%20Leaving%20Harvard%20After%20Tenure%20Dispute%0A%0AThe%20public%20intellectual%20and%20professor%20of%20African-American%20studies%20will%20head%20to%20Union%20Theological%20Seminary%20in%20New%20York.%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2021%2F03%2F08%2Fus%2Fcornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html%3Fsmid%3Dem-share>
*
*
Cornel West is joining the faculty of Union Theological Seminary, where
he was first hired at the age of 23.
Cornel West is joining the faculty of Union Theological Seminary, where
he was first hired at the age of 23.Credit...Craig Matthews/The Press of
Atlantic City, via Associated Press
Anemona Hartocollis <https://www.nytimes.com/by/anemona-hartocollis>
ByAnemona Hartocollis <https://www.nytimes.com/by/anemona-hartocollis>
* NYT, March 8, 2021,5:07 p.m. ET
Cornel West is abandoning his quest for tenure at Harvard and going back
to Union Theological Seminary, where he first taught 44 years ago, the
New York seminary announced on Monday.
Over the past few weeks, Dr. West, 67, a popular professor of
African-American studies and progressive activist, had threatened to
leave Harvard because, he said, the university had balked at a
recommendation by a faculty committee that his untenured position be
converted to a tenured one.
He has been a tenured professor at Yale, Princeton and Harvard in the
past but left Harvard once before, in 2002 after a public fight with
Lawrence Summers, the university’s president at the time. He returned to
a nontenured position at Harvard in 2017.
“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. West back home to Union where he started
his teaching career, at this time of momentous challenge,” the Rev. Dr.
Serene Jones, the seminary’s president, said in a statement announcing
the move. “His esteemed legacy of engaging the most pressing problems
facing our world — including racism, poverty, sexism and so much more —
is an inspiration to all, and illustrates the power of faith to create
profound change.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/cornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html#after-story-ad-1>
Dr. West has been awarded the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair, named after a
German theologian, the announcement said, and will teach a range of
subjects in philosophy, politics, cultural theory and literature. His
appointment is effective in July.
Dr. West could not immediately be reached for comment. But he toldThe
Boycott Times <https://boycottx.org/full-of-fire/>in an interview
published on Monday that he was tired of what he called hypocrisy and
dishonesty at Harvard. “I can only take so much pettiness in terms of
ways in which I thought I was disrespected and devalued,” Dr. West said
in the interview.
Dr. West said in the interview that he had received strong support from
Harvard students and slices of the faculty — more than 1,500 people
signed a petition asking that he be considered for tenure — but that the
university had become “highly commodified and bureaucratized.”
“Harvard has actually done very well in terms of bringing different
peoples of different colors and gender at a high level into the
administration,” he said. “But it does not yet translate on the ground
in terms of faculty. It does not yet translate in terms of being able to
speak to the seeking of truth amongst the students.”
For that reason, he said, “I’ve got to make my move to the great Union
Theological Seminary. My perennial home.” He noted that he had first
been hired there at the age of 23. He has previously taught at Union
over three different periods, including just before moving to Harvard in
2017, and he said he was returning with gusto.
Editors’ Picks
The Activists Working to Remake the Food System
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/t-magazine/food-security-activists.html?action=click&algo=lda_hellinger&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=437039280&impression_id=523eb440-8067-11eb-9f8b-f5da6d6b89a0&index=0&pgtype=Article®ion=ccolumn&req_id=144279626&surface=home-featured&variant=3_lda_hellinger&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
The Pandemic Needs Its Smokey Bear
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/business/coronavirus-pandemic-safety-trust.html?action=click&algo=lda_hellinger&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=649510521&impression_id=523eb441-8067-11eb-9f8b-f5da6d6b89a0&index=1&pgtype=Article®ion=ccolumn&req_id=144279626&surface=home-featured&variant=3_lda_hellinger&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/business/the-robots-are-coming-for-phil-in-accounting.html?action=click&algo=lda_hellinger&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=896437106&impression_id=523eb442-8067-11eb-9f8b-f5da6d6b89a0&index=2&pgtype=Article®ion=ccolumn&req_id=144279626&surface=home-featured&variant=3_lda_hellinger&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending>
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/cornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html?action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending#after-pp_edpick>
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/cornel-west-leaving-harvard-union.html#after-story-ad-2>
“I’m making the move back to New York, and it’s not a move out of
default,” he said. “Not at all. I’m going with a smile. I’m going fired up.”
After news of the tenure dispute became public, faculty members in the
African-American studies department and divinity school, where he has
his Harvard appointments, voted to begin the tenure process for him. The
university did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Word of his decision to leave Harvard spread quickly.
Walter Johnson, a colleague in the Department of African and African
American Studies, said people were “shocked” and “deeply dismayed.” “He
is an intellectual giant and moral polestar, and it is very sad for the
university to see him go,” Dr. Johnson said.
Dr. West’s dispute over tenure put a new focus on complaints that Black
and Latino professors are underrepresented in the ranks of tenured
professors, not just at Harvard. It caused enough consternation at
Harvard that the university’s president, Lawrence Bacow, told a faculty
meeting last week that he was “firmly committed to the success of our
Black faculty.”
Dr. Westsaid in an interview with The New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/us/cornel-west-harvard-tenure.html>last
week that he did not know why his request to be considered for a tenured
post had been rebuffed, but that he thought it could have something to
do with his age and his support for the Palestinian cause, which he
called a “taboo” issue at Harvard.
Although he had been offered more money and an endowed chair at Harvard,
the dispute, Dr. West said last week, was not about money but about respect.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#7095): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7095
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/81189086/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
