University of Washington Bothell Presents Cornel West, Ph.D.

good morning and welcome and especially our students see here welcoming dr. Cornel West to this wonderful fireside chat this morning I've been bragging about our students students our students from an institution University of Washington Bothell whose core principle is well grounded in diversity and we're just so lucky to have dr. West with us let me just give you a quick intro of dr. West I'm sure you know so much more about him than what I can tell you you know in a few words but he's he retired from Princeton University and he's he was he held a distinguished professor class of 1943 professorship at at Princeton University but for a brief period time we lost him to his alma mater Harvard University where he received his undergraduate degree and of course his doctorate from Princeton University and then but then he came back to Princeton and where he retired but he also has a distinguished record of teaching at Union Theological Seminary where he started and then now he's also affiliated with Yale University Harvard University Princeton University and also University of Paris wonderful scholar wonderful philosopher also you're very familiar probably familiar with his many books that he has written and edited he has written about 19 books some of the most famous ones are race matters democracy matters and of course his memoir brother West living and loving outloud I believe that's and but he's been on every air every imaginable shows talk shows from Larry King to CNN to NPR to national international Media all across the globe and in fact I think he's going to be traversing across the globe in the has been for for many many years really talking about these important issues among you you're one of three I think you're either a big fan of dr. Cornel West Cornel West or someone who's intellectual senses were touched provoked or just affected by those things that dr. West has to say and it's really really great honor and great pleasure to have dr. Cornel West with us today and so I'm gonna turn the mic over to dr. West and let's hear for dr. Cornel West and welcoming to the universe Washington Bothell can I use orders all right there already okay I am so blessed to be here we're gonna have a good time I'm glad we're starting early because I thought I'd have to apologize I've got to speak at Berkeley this afternoon so I'm gonna be able to spend a good hour and a half trying to wrestle with some of these issues together but I want to begin by of course saluting my very dear brother we go back to Princeton days I remember this wonderful work there he was younger I was younger but we still had the same calling give a hand to my dear brother president wolf did I want to salute sister Suzanne where's sister Suzanne where is she where is she where is she there she is give it up with Susan together I was blessed to meet with the student leaders earlier today and appreciate the high quality conversation of course I want to acknowledge my dear sister tiara because she wasn't one to facilitate my coming everywhere she did she to every last night and then we're gonna talk about the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel that I think it's Queens with the name of the church Queens by another name of the Church in Seattle Queens something something Church very prophetic church for aggressive church nobody heard of it huh already so I'll be there wherever it is whatever it is but thank you so much for coming out but I'd like to reflect this a little bit in the fire chat what it means to try to wrestle with one's own calling because when I think about my own blessed life it's not only that I know I am Who I am because somebody loved me each time I think of what it is to make my own trek from my mother's womb to tomb I think of the profound love and service and sacrifice that came my way beginning with Irene and cliff beginning with my brother cliff to sister Cynthia and Cheryl beginning with my grandson Kaylin and my son Cliff Clifton and my daughter they tuned and then all of the teachers at Harvard and Yale Union Theological Seminary colleagues you think of the magnificent faculty at this place you all still have relatively small classes is that right oh so it's not a knowledge Factory right now his hands on give it up for your faculty high quality faculty all that makes a difference that makes the difference and in my own pilgrimage and we talked about this last night I've been in so many ways just obsessed with this sense that I learned from Socrates or he says philosophy itself as a meditation on in preparation for death in philosophy is what Philo Sofi a love of wisdom and love of money the love of pleasure I love a status I love a wealth that love of self love of wisdom at his deepest level and you come to a magnificent institution like this one relatively new in terms of the history of colleges and universities but at the same time many of you are relatively new in terms of being first generation to hit the ground running that means you got a hunger and a thirst you can't wait to come here and learn how to die in order to learn how to live because the philosophy itself is a meditation in preparation for death it's not just physical death but it's the death in life when you call certain assumptions in the question that you have when you call certain prejudices in the question that you have and you let it go that's the form of death just like when you fall in love and that old self is radically calling the question and that new self emerges intertwined with another self with a smile on your face love was a form of death because there is no growth maturity development or rebirth in life without something dying without something dying and that's very important because we live in a market culture obsessed with superficial things obsessed with fleeting pleasures rather than enduring Joy's we live in a market culture where people are more and more obsessed with just being celebrities so you can be center stage the peacock effect look at me look at me look at me look at me rather than the quality of human being that you are and you're short moved from womb to tomb so early on I learned that the quest was always about being great in the sense and I'm a Christian in the biblical sense he or she is greatest among you will be a servant well I have a quality of service what attempt to engage in a fallible quest for unarmed truth and unapologetic love and for we human beings the condition of any serious talk about truth is to allow suffering to speak we were talking about this with the students today so when you talk about issues of diversity you know Thomas of Marge you know and peripheral you come with a quest for truth but what is diversity what does it signify it signifies precious priceless human beings who have been wounded and scarred and bruised those humanity has been called into question human beings who have been terrorized and traumatized and stigmatized it could be precious Jewish brothers sisters in jew-hating Europe it could be our precious indigenous brothers and sisters in this and whose disposition in a violation of their babies was a precondition of all to talk about American democracy wave your flag or you won't be conditioned of that flag don't forget about the precious indigenous brothers and sisters oh brother West a diversity issue no it's the truth it's the truth we talk by the truth the same would be true the tribute to women in domestic households confine the private spaces can't go to universities can't appear with dignity in public space it's not PC chitchat there's no political correctness its wrestling with the truth could be brown brothers and sisters with moving borders I'm going to California few years ago that used to be Mexico right oh we got to tell a story I'll make that shift from Mexico to USA wasn't Pleasant bloody war ugly war or it could be my own black folk and when I say my own it doesn't mean exclusively my own but everybody has our oo TS and your Roo TS is connected to our oh you tes if your roots are strong enough then the routes that you take will be such that you can embrace others but if your roots the weak and you hate yourself you put yourself down you disrespect yourself you devalue yourself you degrade yourself then your ro you - yes it's gonna be highly problematic because you're gonna go around looking for approval and recognition from everybody else in order to feel that void in your own soul because you haven't got your ro OTS together that's why I'm always quite explicit and might talk about suffering or even my talk about unapologetic love I try to have a intense and genuine love of everybody but it begins on the chocolate side of town because that's where the depth mom and dad and my own church Shiloh Baptist Church Reverend Willie Pete cook and beacon hidden and Sarah rate my big Cajun Bible School teacher never forget him history remembrance what went into me we had a wonderful discussion with our dear brother today and his precious mother in Washington DC all that love coming at him but he couldn't help but have a smile on his face given what she went through and she still got a smile on her face give him the smile on his face 77 years old right now Washington DC you see what being honest and candid about what goes in to us that's also a matter of learning how to die and I call it what it is to be soulful because I've always viewed myself as a jazz man in the life of the mind and a blues man in the world of ideas and what is distinctive about jazz one you got to find your voice and that's difficult you got to find who you really are you got to do we have the courage they interrogate yourself the way Socrates talked about an unexamined life is not worth living at 9:30 a.m. Plato's apology William Butler Yeats put it so well it takes more courage to examine the dark precincts of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield courage to wrestle with what has been deposited inside of you in terms of history and culture insights as well as blindnesses virtues as well as vices because we all fall short we were talking about that earlier today Beckett's great line in his last piece of prose fiction worse word Oh was the name of that novel he wrote he talked about try again fell again fail better try again fail again fail better that's the story of our lives they come to your funeral and you in the coffin they go say how well did they fail what kind of love of one was it a wisdom was enough neighbor weathered of justice or was it about that thin stuff that's superficial stuff and that's why when we talk about education especially this grand institution but so many other students around the country it is really fundamentally about the formation of attention how do we get ourselves to attend to the things that are crucial in our short move from Mama's womb to tomb and we live in a culture that's what producing weapons of mass distraction that's what it is to live at a market-driven culture the bottom line is profit or as wu-tang clan puts it cream cash rules everything around me but it doesn't have to rule me I can engage my own quest for integrity and honesty and decency and a sense of virtue and trying to have a virtuosity of being able to master whatever craft or technique it is as a doctor a lawyer or a scientists or poet or whatever it is it is not just about cupidity love of money it's just not about venality can't wait to be bought and we live in a thoroughgoing market society where everybody is up for sale everything is up for sale I'm not just on my politicians but we can start there across the board the market has become the idol so even market education you're coming to college in order to gain access to a skill to get a job and live in some vanilla suburb little too narrow we're talking about deep education not cheap schooling nothing wrong with gaining access to a skill and I pray God you do get a job with a living wage which means you're gonna have to have some worker organization because some of these bosses their bottom line is cash cash cash money money money me me me we've seen in the last few years how many Wall Street executives went to jail given the crimes committed on Wall Street zilch zero no set I've taught in prison for 37 years I'm teaching the course right now in Rahway prison in New Jersey 150 brothers 62% at almost 2/3 of those brothers in that class went to jail for soft drugs so they get caught with crack the Wall Street executives can steal billions of dollars and have tea in the White House and when they do get caught what happens well let's just negotiate we can pay you some money we know we did some bad things but we can't we just pay you some money so we all never have to take responsibility can you imagine Jamal the teacher calling the mayor up when they get caught with crack can we talk about how much money I can pay so I don't have to go to jail mr. mayor no it's a criminal justice system itself that shows it's tilted against the weak and the vulnerable it's tilted against poor and working people and especially those on the chocolate side but not exclusively on the chocolate side something wrong something deeply wrong and it's not just a question of name-calling and fitting appointing or trying to get at the truth allowing the suffering to speak and this is true in our own individual eyes if you think that you can be a person of integrity and honesty and decency and not come to terms with your own wounds and scars and live a life that we wear the mask then the language of the great Paul Laurence Dunbar you're gonna discover you run into a dead end and you'll find yourself wrestling with spiritual malnutrition and moral constipation by moral constipation I mean you know what's right but it doesn't flow just kind of stuck but least you know what's right you're not against it yet because the gangster doesn't suffer for moral Constitution against it's like the silicates of Plato's Republic might makes right I determined what's right I have no conscience I have no sense of right and good it's all about my power it's the will to power in the most crude way that's something different that's something different in the gangster is a ssin of a society let alone the gangster ization of a world that's obsessed with just power and profit but no space for non market values like truth and love and fidelity and trust and integrity is a very very bleak place and we are in that place I salute the young brothers and sisters of all colors here because I grew up in the 60s and 70s it was a different oh yes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel standing tall talking about the war crimes of America in Vietnam and synagogue here comes Martin Luther King jr. in churches and sights what you're talking about Martin I'm willing to die your life I'm willing to give my life for what truth love why because I have a hypersensitivity to the suffering of others and that is my focus what you got to say Tom Hayden what she got to say Stokely Carmichael remember the bright before Stokely called it black power on blooms Day June 16th 1966 he said I've been arrested 27 times not yet 25 years old I'm tired of it black power they buddy the press just picked up black power say something about why the brother went to jail so many times in gutbucket Jim Crow apartheid America how many times anybody go to jail for justice he already been 27 times why because he following Martin both from love warriors they lovin people especially and unloved people of black people taught to hate themselves so we have their own lips and lips and noses and hair texture and skin pigmentation too many black folk believe it the white supremacy inside of black people how do you shake it learning how to die it's got to go that's true for homophobia what our precious gay brothers and lesbian sisters and bisexual and transgender that's true for our Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters talk that they are terrorists by the corporate media what a lie every community has its own gangsters why yellow Jewish Muslim Arab Asian and so forth and so on and I know it's true for black foe because I grew up with gangsters in fact I was a gangsta myself for I met Jesus I'm just a redeemed center with gangster proclivities to this very day you don't know winning it I don't know winner - break out now but the hole it goes Hold'em eat it together got digging but the point is is that if we can be open to that in such a way that we're willing to come together have conversations and struggle together based on the distinctive features of the quest for truth in love which is what acknowledgement availability vulnerability can be a jazz woman all blues man without being finer a bow put your soul on the table okay Ray Charles okay Stevie Wonder okay Sarah Vaughan okay Carole King okay James Taylor puts your soul on the table I love about that tradition very critical out of this contemporary music I don't hear too much soul music I hear a lot of noise because the culture is about body stimulation is not about soul stirring I love Beyonce but she is part of the culture of superficial spectacle give me Kim Burrell give me Anthony Hamilton they echo Donnie Hathaway they echo Ashford & Simpson they echo Nina Simone they echo Luther Vandross they echo Curtis Mayfield oh I won't start singing now you all know what I'm talking about and these are not just entertainers there's spiritual warriors I grew with her buddies play Oregon in our church every fourth Sunday named Sylvester known to the world Sly Stone that Negro was a genius where did he say he say stand in the end you still be you one who's done all the things you set out to do stand there's a cross for you to bear things that go through if you're going anywhere stand there's a standing tall in the giant beside him about to fall y'all know that song 1970 you don't have to be born we've got the Internet how do you stand courage to think critically for yourself against the green radical nonconformity shatter conformity shatter cowardice shatter complicity no one full of purity everybody falling on they face what's the quality of your bounce-back courage to love empathize sympathize get inside of the skin of other folk that takes courage it takes imagination not manipulation imagination you're a wonderful last line of Shelly's great pencil of defensive poetry poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world as the great shall a revolutionary Shelley what do you mean Percy I'm getting inside of the skin my Greek brothers and sisters struggling for independence I'm getting in the side of the skin of my working-class folks even though I went to Oxford well that's the jump from Oxford the working-class Brittany had a lot of that you need a lot of imagination maybe a little grace to what he did in his short magnificent poetic in political life that Shelley that's what we're talking about and the beautiful thing is is that at this particular moment we've got young people like yourselves all around the country in the world now I'm now hungry and thirsty for some good quest for unarmed truth and unapologetic love in a world ruled by big money big banks big corporations trans-pacific partnership reshape the whole world in light of corporate interests back into United States stagnating wages for over 35 years profits breaking records last year stock market 30% increase Dow Jones 28% increase did it translate on the ground the pressures working people know what about our poor people hardly visible in the public discourse what about the children that's the mission and it's not just their physical condition it's the condition of their souls 22 percent living in poverty all precious for all colors 22 percent of children living in poverty richest nation in history the world that's morally disgraceful spiritually profane 40 percent of red children 40 percent of brown 40 percent of black children living in poverty and yet no moral outrage no righteous indignation where is the holy anger where is it diffused while we often are quote unquote amused by the prett media and it's distractions thank God for Amy Goodman and a few of the others trying to tell the truth trying to tell the key I salute my dear sister here in Seattle I haven't met her what net what's her name sister yeah that's the one that's the one I have met my dear sister below she's on fire she is on fire there like anybody else of course she has no monopoly on the truth but I love her tilt toward the poor and working people we need counter voices countervailing forces counter culture counter hegemonic sensibility so that we have a much more robust conversation and especially as it relates to education because in education as I said before truth love knowledge compassion that ought to be at the center of it you notice I didn't say smartness I don't like that word let the phone be smart we got to be wise these days people think the highest compliment you can give to somebody oh she's so smart that's not necessarily compliment Nazis had smart people white supremacist been very smart Nelson parents has been very smart a lot of Houma folks very smart something's missing where is the wisdom where's the compassion where's the courage it embraces smartness I'm not promoting stupidity but it cuts so much deeper than a direct connection between narrow conceptions of success it can be by material choice give me my status and I'll be well-adjusted to injustice and well adapted to indifference and difference is the one trait that makes the very Angels weak William James used to say the great Hester used to say indifference the evils more evil and evil itself we created a whole culture of callousness and indifference toward poor people weak and vulnerable and think somehow the chickens won't come home to roost oh no you're gonna reap what you sow the earth is going to bounce back nature's gonna bounce back if you have ecological manipulation and domination poor people sooner or later wake up and when they wake up we all will hope and pray that they tilt toward love and justice and not hatred and revenge that's why Nelson Mandela in Martin King a powerful figures it's not that they just forgave white brothers and sisters for treating them and their peoples like cockroaches but is that they love the people who were treated like cockroaches so genuine an authentic way that that love spilled over with forgiveness for so many of the vanilla brothers and sisters who were indifferent and callous toward the suffering of black people they go hand in hand the love of those treated like trash and steel the human embrace because no one moment fundamentally defines in person and that's why you love other folk even when they're wrong because you don't want to trump their possibility trunk their potential they can change Malcolm little was a gangster with me and he was loved by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad so that he would transform his life he learned how to die in order to learn how to live and he came up with Malcolm X who would have thought Malcolm X could come out of Malcolm little know was Elijah's love and a sale turn that sell into a library reading every day and then having various study groups and even he had to outgrow alive because Elijah was wrong he said white folk strike me as being devils no but some of them got devilish behavior you're wrong they not Devils we all have propensity to a devilish behavior Malcolm had to outgrow that and what a grand example of learning how to die in order to learn how to live and that autobiography of malcolm x a revolutionary muslim brother got people to move in islam be compatible with democracy it strikes me as being inherently authoritarian read a little bit about Malcolm X and then open yourself to the tradition of the rich Islamic thinkers that are not confined to the stereotype and of course this is true with Judaism and Christianity all of Hinduism and so forth democracy shot through who you think Gandhi was cut against the green who you think in Bekaa was with Buddhism cut against the grain oh that's education concerned with diversity translated as quest for truth compassion I'm gonna enter that we're going on and on but always in with the Blues always because if you're going to be a long distance runner you got to be a blues person you had to be a blues person because history is dark storms the catastrophe always already there you had to be able to muster the courage to think for yourself courage to love and courage to hope hope has for me nothing to do with optimism especially American optimism not at all hope is what Curtis Mayfield meant when he said keep on pushing that's not optimistic at all because he got the dark clouds when BB King says nobody loves me but my momma she might be jiving too that's the blues death can't destroy Fink but he has a tremendous fortitude he thinks for himself plays Lucille for himself Lucille plays him by itself for what the guitar scene that's a great tradition and that's very much for me what education at his best is about do we have the courage universities usually are not sites that put a premium on courage they put a premium on ambition and success the courage embraces ambition but it says in the end is not just a question of whether you're successful but it's fundamentally a question of what you will be faithful to when you are successful don't allow success to be an idol use it for something the same is true with privilege oh I don't know what to do with my privilege use it deploy it for something bigger than you mobilize it for something grander that's what we're talking about that's what we come up but thank you all so very much thank you so much we'll have good you

Channel: UW Bothell

Views: 39,881

Keywords: Cornel West (Author), University Of Washington Bothell (Organization), Education (Word), Higher Education (School Category), Social Justice (Activism Issue), college students, diversity

Id: mTVIAgCRuSw

Length: 33min 14sec (1994 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 31 2014