Professor Cornel West on why he left Harvard over tenure dispute

now to the high profile dispute over tenure at harvard that's led star african american studies and divinity school professor dr cornel west to leave the university he'll join union theological seminary in new york as a tenured professor this summer and professor west joins us now dr west thank you so much for your time and joining us tonight thank you so very much and congratulations on your new books they just wait forever oh thank you so much i appreciate that now you've held tenured positions in the past at harvard yale and princeton and you've been back at harvard in non-tenured position for the past five years but the university declined your recent request to be considered for tenure again were you given reasons for why you were denied this time and why did you decide to leave rather than pursue your case well it's a complicated case in the sense that it was a 10-year review that they had denied and i think they've changed their mind now but it's too late and i i don't really know exactly why they said maybe age but no that couldn't be the case i'm giving a gift for lectures in scotland uh it could be it couldn't be academics because i was university professor at harvard and princeton i was tenured at yale 37 years ago so it doesn't make any sense and so my hypothesis is it might have something to do with politics but you know you it it it it we we'd have to check and and see on that i'm just i just want to make sure that each and every one of the universities to have a fundamental commitment intellectual freedom and can hold off market pressures so that whatever issue we talk about i mean i'm deeply concerned about the israeli occupation and palestinian predicament and that's not a popular issue and and i think we have to have a serious robust uninhibited conversation about that issue that's respectful it's not anti-jewish but it's not anti-palestinian either so that i'm concerned about that issue but i'm concerned about issues across the board it's got to be intellectual freedom at a harvard at yale at a broxbury community college at a university chicago at howard or spelman anywhere well you say you're concerned about that issue are you concerned that potentially your support for the palestinian cause may have cost you tenure i i wonder i wonder about that i know i know there's other cases recently at harvard where it has been very high quality scholars in fact there was a jewish israeli woman one of the finest scholars who was very critical of the israeli occupation she also was denied a tenured position so that i i i hope that there's not a a pattern setting in that uh we can't have a serious discussion of this issue and as you know it's very delicate because as soon as you raise the issue you're accused of being anti-semite anti-jewish and so forth and and for me i'm fundamentally committed to jewish humanity and a fight against uh any kind of anti-jewish hatred but i am just as committed to palestinian humanity as i am to jewish humanity you talked just now about a few things that are worth fighting for for you why was this not worth fighting for it's because it was too late the public outcry has been magnificent among students and among fellow citizens and people all around the world harvard was starting to shift but you see i don't believe that respect can be coerced i don't believe that respect can be uh forced so it was too late and i wanted to go back to the great union theological seminary i wanted to go back to the place where i can stretch out the legacy of james cohen and james washington and james forbes and ryan o'neil and paul tillich and beverly harrison randy robert handy those that's that's very much where my heart mind and soul really is and so uh i'm blessed to return there and the great don schreiber who was my former president who has provided money for the dietrich bonhoeffer chair dietrich bonhoeffer was the greatest prophetic christian fighting against an evil thug named hitler of course he was executed april the 9th 1945 by the nazis i will be occupying his chair and so i'm blessed i'm the most blessed free black man in late modernity i really am last week that the president of harvard was quoted as saying at a faculty meeting that he was firmly committed to the success of our black faculty do you feel that that was an accurate statement well i think that brother larry he he's got a good heart he just has to have more spine he's got to translate his words into action he's got to translate his black administrators he's got some wonderful black administrators at the top but you have to translate it into impact on faculty and especially on these students and uh i think that's a process and we just have to keep the pressure on him he he said that let's make sure he says what he means and means what he says and i i'm in solidarity with all will make sure we got high quality black folk brown folk indigenous folk women gay lesbian and trans and non-binary and we got to make sure in fact that they remain rooted in integrity they remain rooted in decency it's not just a matter of skin pigmentation it's a matter of black folk who are committed to integrity and honesty and decency and intellectual freedom and holding off the pressures of greed and conformity and callousness and indifference toward the suffering of others dr west is there a policy for tenure in other words are there clear boxes that you have to check or is there a lot of subjectivity i think it's both i think there are impersonal procedures and processes but in the end it's a judgment only of the president and only of the provost uh you got faculty and an ad hoc committee but at harvard it's only the president and the provost who in the end decide and it's there where you can end up with some subjective uh uh uh elements in any judgment and that's just being human that's just being human and let's just talk lastly more broadly about faculty diversity as you know harvard has faced criticism in recent years for denying tenure to other african-american and latino scholars and diversity in the teaching ranks is an issue across all of academia really what's the most important thing that can happen to improve the process so that more diverse professors make it into 10-year faculty ranks and do you think that harvard is doing something wrong on this front well you know the problem is in the higher levels of professional managerial sites be it silicon valley be it wall street be at harvard too many of those sites still look like the national hockey league so all the talk about diversity in the world if it doesn't translate on the ground then in the end we've still got not just a lot of work to do we got to quit being dishonest and we got to be more vigilant in terms of ensuring there's high quality black folk and when they're there you don't disrespect them you don't devalue them that they have grand contributions to make just like anybody else dr cornell west we thank you so much for your time appreciate you coming on the show thank you i salute you my disses thank you hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

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Keywords: yale, havard, cornel, west, doctor, academia, universities, tenure, professor, abcnl, prime, students, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-76353381

Id: 8ya1ISUqkeA

Length: 7min 50sec (470 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Cyborg_Marx]

They CANCELLED Cornell West? Academic liberal elites have gone TOO FAR! First they came for the based, and you said nothing, Who Will Be Next????