Here's An Inside Forbes Report On Cornel West's Finances

Cornell West has been a fixture of American society for more than three decades ubiquity provided liquidity and West earned an estimated 15 million or so over the last 30 years but oddly as he mounts an independent run for president his net worth resembles that of a first year ajun [Music] [Applause] Professor hi I'm Ally Jackson Jolly I'm here with my colleague forb staff writer Zack Everson Zach thanks for being here with us my pleasure yeah so you and your team um regularly write about um the presidential candidates digging into their wealth how much money do they have um what are their assets um and so most recently you do that for Cornell West um Cornell West political philosopher um most famous for his essays in written in 1991 I believe um called Race Matters um before I ask you how much he's worth tell us a little bit about Cornell West what should we know about him um really impressive backstory came up from pretty humble means grew up in uh Sacramento uh mom was a school teacher and then principal dad was a contractor um one of four kids if his you know autobiography is to believed uh be believed and there's every intent indication it should be very smart from a young age just just tore through academics very good athlete he he was active in track he said played the violin um very active on the dating and dancing scene he would talk about what a dancer he was uh went to Harvard at the age of 17 graduated in three years in part because he was afraid he was going to run out of money to pay for it and then he um went to Princeton on a full p on a full scholarship got his PhD but even before he had graduated Princeton he was publishing he was teaching at other colleges and uh just just one of the you know modern America's foremost thinkers and I mean public intellectuals we're not a country that really has a lot of public intellectuals but he is certainly one of them it was cross like crossed into the Main Street you recognize him he's got a very distinct look he wears the same outfit every day he's been in the Matrix sequels where they created Parts specifically for him um and now running for president yeah so okay tell me what is so what is he worth you know and what are his assets Cher he is worth about nothing is our estimate um he has two assets the best that we can tell uh he owns part of a home in Princeton New Jersey that he co-owns with the university there and that's worth a little bit over $200,000 and then he also has a retirement fund that's worth over 200,000 as well but he owes a little bit less than that in tax leans to the US government which which wipes out whatever Holdings he has right there okay but you know author um scholar Professor um that doesn't necessarily say to me that he earned a lot of wealth but did he at one point he with a name like Cornell West yeah yeah he's he's done very well for himself we estimate that he's made about $15 million over the past 30 years seems to be pretty steady at around about a half million dollar a year and we have some really good information on this from some divorce filings from his third marriage where his wife really broke down what his earnings were and actually got a list of payments that he received from his speaking agency so we could see that he made several hundred, a year in speaking fees um and recently he said he's also he told us that he's made a decent chunk of money on master class so he's done pretty well there so his University salaries have been anywhere from about 115,000 to I think 230,000 is what we've been able to track down but the the speaking fees have added to that and we we didn't have information on books so we left that out but clearly you know he's got other things going on he's released a CD he's written numerous books I mean there's there's more to it than that so I think the $15 million is is probably conservative so then um but you just told me he is not worth anything um so how did he walk me through this how did he lose his money um two main issues that we can see is is he's been married five times and there have been some divorce settlements there that have not been super favorable for him and tax leans you when when he gets paid from the University they withhold salaries like any other employer will do but he did not have the taxes withheld from his speeches he said and I mean this also comes out in the divorce filings so when the tax bill came he would owe hundreds of thousands of dollars and he did not have the savings to pay that and those would just build up year after year after year I mean he he referred to it to us as like a reptile biting its own tail and that he would pay some off and yet then more would still come in so that is been the major problem there but so we we knew this you know he was upfront with it in his biography he says like I'm not good with money um and also like I've at that time I think he'd been married three times and like yes I go through relationships a lot but we didn't really know like where the money was going why doesn't he have the money to pay these taxes where is it why doesn't he have it pulled aside to pay when tax day comes along and one of the we got a bit of an answer here with the divorce filings it was about 126 pages and his third wife lays out in in a lot of detail um Affairs that he had had children that he had had and spending money on travel on maintaining a separate apartment that he was paying $5,000 a month for um to carry on extramarital relationships um he was off living in New Mexico with a woman who he was married at the time but he was living in New Mexico with another woman and their child um and then there were pretty significant um divorce F or payments that he ended up making in alimony so in your reporting you do talk lot about his how his divorces cost him how his Affairs cost him how these um romantic entanglements that seem to be sort of Serial and at one point you mentioned that he um impregnated and abandoned um one of the women um these aren't necessarily helpful narratives you know there are of course stereotypes that black men face um and so you know talk to me about um your thought process when you put this into your reporting well there's the general when somebody's running for president Character Matters and that's that's just and but those weren't new it was you know it was well known that he'd gone through all these relationships but we're Forbes we report on money and that's What mattered was that these relationships told you what was going on with his money you know he had his first divorce and it told us there what he ended up having to pay and what he got to keep I mean what he got to keep was he took it specifically said like he got to keep the albums the stereo and a couple of chairs and how much money he was paying and also what percentage of his future earnings so that's why we mentioned okay he and he had a child there that he aband wh and then later on when that child was an adult though we also dug into how he said in his later divorce filing how he was supporting him so we covered that the same thing with the extramarital Affairs you know the fact that he had that apartment um aside from where he was living at the Four Seasons with his wife mattered because that's $5,000 a month that he's he's spending on this and also that you know he took this woman to Turkey well there's there's money being spent right there and that's that's really mattered there was a lot more in those divorce filings but it didn't have any money aspect to it so we didn't we didn't put it in there I mean it's it's public it's it's it's you can pull these up these documents have been around for 30 years no one's reported them before though for whatever reason um so it's out there and yeah you know sometimes there is this stereotype but I mean these are the facts of this story and you know we were very careful with choosing what to report what to put out there and you it tells the story of why this guy has no money and a lot of it is because he spent it and he he says as much I mean he says in his in his autobiography like I spent it on women and you know okay great you said that but how specifically did you do that and now we have more of that answer yeah and so um you've said a couple of times and even right now he said it himself so you know arguably one of the um smartest or smarter political philosophers in my lifetime um he had to know he said this stuff he's written about it it's been public um when you run for president these things come out and and yet like what occurs to me is that he spent his life writing about um the interplay of race class gender and power so um I wonder um is his life playing out um in front of everyone you know talking about um his irresponsibility he's not really understanding some of the tax codes some of the fin you know how to manage Finance I'm not coming from generational wealth do you get the sense that maybe um He is wanting this to be in the public on purpose because it's what he's always thought about and what he's always talked about no he's he stopped talking to us once we started asking specific questions about the divorce fin he was he was very good at responding to us earlier we did two uh interviews Jam M Denham who I co-wrote the author with spoke with him twice for like over 40 minutes he had a fairly firm grasp in there of where his money was why he didn't have it if he wasn't aware that he needed to withhold money for federal taxes he certainly earned it the first year that hit I mean when you get that tax bill it's like oh yeah okay maybe I should start doing that and now we're this has gone on for decades um you know it's a common issue that we have not just with him but with a lot of other people like if they have this baggage in their closet and then they run for office like were they not expecting this to come out but sometimes it doesn't I mean look George George Santos got elected and it wasn't until after he got elected that like oh yeah wow there's a lot going on here um and it's Al said these documents have been around forever but hadn't been reported before you know it wasn't until we asked for them that they really you know this public information became truly accessible to the public um so I don't know you speculation but if if these information hasn't come public previously why would it come out now like he's been a public figure for for quite some time just not necessarily vetted in this way um and like I said you know the reason that the money you know that he did say yeah he wasn't good with money and so what we what we did now is kind of explained why you know what's what's he said he spent it on wom okay what specifically did you do it on like was he and and there were other things that we mentioned in the article Beyond Affairs like he had a condo with the Four Seasons he had a Mercedes and he had a Cadillac at the same time you know he mentioned that he and his wife like to they would go to gas they would go out to nice restaurants I mean he even said like the condo with the four seasons in hindsight we probably couldn't have afforded um but you know being able to provide that that background on this this very important person I think really matters and as for whether he's living you know what he talks about um you know in in Race Matters which I I read while reporting this article he there are a couple things one is that he does talk about the importance of maintaining strong families in the black community and here you've got a guy who's been divorced multiple times you know has one child out of wedlock another child he divorced the mom when uh she was three and he said in his autobiography was because like he just didn't have a lifestyle that could accommodate that and then you also have him talking about the need to tax the wealthy and the 1% or whatever I mean he's he's he's up there based on income you know he's pulling in over $500,000 a year this is something somebody who by his by his own definition should be taxed at even a higher rate than what he's being taxed at currently and you know instead he's dealing with tax Lanes going back years we're almost out of time um but I wanted to ask you one more thing you have there's an interesting um line in your article where you say um you know his his latest Act of financial recklessness is running for president can you explain what you mean by that yeah I mean the big one is he is on sabatical he's taking sabatical to run but the sabatica will run out some will end sometime before The Campaign Will so he'll be without a salary I mean here's somebody who is in debt tax leans and is now going to find himself jobless as he runs for president which Ian he's not going to win you know he's not going to get that $400,000 year salary as president and um yeah I mean that's that's not you always you kind of Wonder and that's one of the things I saw after we posted this article is like is he doing this for the money and I mean the answer here is clearly no I mean he says he doesn't expect to get any more Book Sales out of this we at Forbes have du dug into the finances of every other candidate running for president I did the one on maryan Williamson so we looked at her book sales she didn't enjoy much of a book SP much of a spike in Book Sales you know it's not running for president is not been a great way for these people to sell books so the mere fact that he's like giing he's in debt he's giving up his job to go run for president is yeah it's a little bit Reckless there and he it's not like he has the savings to go back on to support we we've seen that he doesn't yeah well thank you it's fascinating reporting you did thank you for being here with us and um I can't wait to see um what you uncover next my pleasure thanks Alie

Channel: Forbes

Views: 2,875

Keywords: Forbes, Forbes Media, Forbes Magazine, Forbes Digital, Business, Finance, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Investing, Personal Finance, cornel west, forbes talks, finances of presidential candidates, zach everson, who is cornel west, 2024 presidential candidates, divorce filings, Harvard, Matrix, Race Matters, W. E. B. Du Bois, princeton, ivy league

Id: NFkk4P5nuwI

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023