Elder of Ziyon dismisses Cornel West’s blaming his failure to be given tenure on those angry with his position on the Palestinians and Israel:
West is not telling the truth.
He was not denied tenure – his position was not a tenure track position!
As this article notes, most academic jobs — even senior ones — are not tenure track anymore. West’s position wasn’t ever eligible for tenure to begin with, and he knew this when he rejoined Harvard in 2016.
During his normal 5-year review, the faculty committee offered him a raise and a 10 year contract, which for a 67-year old man is as good as tenure. But he refused, insisting that they change his position itself into a tenured position – something that this review board couldn’t do. “As the Boston Globe reported, “The faculty committee was only in charge of reviewing his reappointment and does not have authority to conduct a review for tenure, [Harvard’s] spokesman said.”
Now, it is obvious why he wasn’t granted tenure – he did not have a tenure-eligible job and one cannot make that change at the drop of a hat. West asked for the job to be changed, which is quite a different matter than being denied tenure!
Yet West is insisting in multiple interviews that he was forced out by Zionists at Harvard rather than his own hubris. Yet if the Zionists at Harvard were out to silence him, why did they offer him a raise and a ten-year contract?
And is it really that difficult to find professors in Ivy League schools who are anti-Israel?
If the “Zionists” are so powerful at Harvard, how is it that so many other anti-Israel professors have been hired and given tenure? There is West’s own colleague in African-American Studies, J. Lorand Matory, who speaks of a Zionist cabal managing to prevent anti-Israel speakers from coming to the campus; there is Professor of Psychology Patrick Cavanagh; there is the now-retired Professor of History John Womack; and many others. As for the notion that Harvard prevents anti-Israel speakers from being invited to the campus, the poet Tom Paulin, well-known for his anti-Israel views that he spews forth on every conceivable occasion, was invited to speak after he made many anti-Israel remarks including, in an interview he gave to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, his remark that Brooklyn-born Jews who had settled in the West Bank ”should be shot dead,” adding ”I think they are Nazis, racists; I feel nothing but hatred for them.”
Now, what does it look like when a professor lies about being denied tenure – and claims that the Jews (sorry, “Zionists”) are secretly behind it?
It sounds far more like West planned to leave Harvard anyway, and decided to make a stink accusing “Zionists” of mistreating him.
Cornel West has throughout his career been a spoiled child of the academic system. Thousands of graduate students over the past three decades, when universities began to contract, and Race and Gender pushed aside all other matters, have been unable to find suitable and stable employment, and have suffered in various ways. Some adjust to the constant insecurity of jobs that must be renewed yearly; some give up searching for university employment after years of fruitless applications and become high school teachers; some attempt to eke out livings as private tutors, or as college-application-essay advisors; some go back to school to earn a law or business degree.
But Cornel West has never suffered; he has always been hired by the most prestigious universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia’s Union Theological Seminary. He has spent much of the time that any other professor would have been expected to devote to his teaching and scholarship, to instead making a name for himself as a dispenser of his wisdom on what he calls “race matters,” and as a far-left political activist. For years he had a radio show with the now-disgraced Tavis Smiley (fired after multiple credible charges of sexual misconduct with his NPR subordinates); he’s been a speaker at countless events for BLM; he’s marched and sung; he’s campaigned vigorously for Al Sharpton and for Bill Bradley, and spent much of 2016 speaking for Bernie Sanders as a surrogate — rather than preparing for his classes, or meeting with students. Although West famously hands out A’s like confetti, which of course helps his “Rate My Professor”ratings – it’s an easy way to get good reviews — not all of his students have been so readily won over.
At Princeton, for example, the first two student entries for “Rate My Professor” judged him to be “Awful.” Here are their comments:
Rating #1
“This professor uses informal language in his books; he has trouble with academic English related to subject verb agreement related to NUMber, as in singular versus plural.
Rating # 2
“Unprepared and indifferent. He would come to class and wing it. He’d often let class out 45 minutes into a two-hour lecture when he ran out of material. Did not put any serious effort into the class or in getting to know his students. He was always off campus and reaching him personally was nearly impossible. But he does have a famous name.”
Naturally Harvard expects its faculty to concentrate on academic matters; that’s something Cornel West, appearing hither and yon, has not been doing. Dropping into his classes as if he were doing the students a favor, often unprepared (“he would come to class and wing it”), at times leaving early (“letting class out 45 minutes into a two-hour lecture”), if he had nothing to say, or didn’t feel like staying when there were other, so much more interesting, things for him to do outside of class: another interview for a newspaper, or on radio or television, a plane trip to a distant state to act as a candidate’s surrogate, a studio recording of one of his hip-hop albums, a movie part, an award to receive as “one of the leading intellectuals of our time” (or words to that preposterous effect). He’s also been named, don’t forget, by some British mass-market magazine as “the fourth greatest thinker for the Covid-19 era.” He’s very busy — he’s practically a conglomerate — is Professor Cornel West.
Harvard was simply not going to yield to his demand that his non-tenured position be turned into a tenured one. So he made his threat – “give me tenure or else I leave” — and then set in motion the protests on his behalf, including a letter signed by 60 graduate students bewailing what the loss of Cornel West would mean:
West’s departure, the students said, would deal “a devastating blow” to all scholars of color.
“If Professor Cornel West, one of the most important intellectuals of our time, is not deemed worthy of tenure, we must ask — what is the inherent [sic] message Harvard is sending to generations of Black scholars and intellectuals?” the students wrote in a letter posted online Monday. “This is an urgent matter of equity and parity for the University.”
In fact, if “equity” were rightly understood, Cornel West would no longer continue to be coddled beyond all reason by university administrators, having his outrageous demands uniquely met. If merit were the only consideration, such a person would not be a professor at all; his true academic soulmate is Ward Churchill. The “inherent” message that Harvard is sending is only this: a non-tenure post does not become a tenured post because Cornel West wants it that way. And West, who spends much of his time on matters having nothing to do with his teaching and soi-disant “scholarship,” has no cause for complaint. He should thank his lucky stars that, with the exception of Lawrence Summers, he has gotten away with a great deal, showing contempt for his students in his failure to adequately prepare for classes or to meet with them outside of class, and unable to produce the kind of scholarly writing one has a right to expect from someone at his level, yet here is Harvard, offering him a ten-year contract, a raise, and a named chair. Who else, with his dismal performance as a teacher and his record as a race-obsessed “scholar,” could hope to receive such treatment?
And was it a surprise that West would place the blame for his not receiving his tenure on the Jews – that is, on the supporters of Israel who, he has the sinister gall to suggest, are out to punish him for his stand “on Israel, the occupation and the Palestinians”? West portrays himself as “speaking truth to power, standing up for the oppressed Palestinians, daring to take on the all-powerful Jews.” It would be an outrage, according to Cornel West, if Cornel West were to be deprived of getting the tenured post at Harvard he knows he deserves, even if it was never supposed to come with his position. That is no way, Cornel West is thinking, to treat “the fourth leading thinker in the Covid-19 era.” Who are we to disagree?
maria says
how could a person whose IQ must be 60 or less have sucha high position in the “prestigious” university.
He should be out and immediately change the name of the “cornel west university.
Soon there will be no prestigious university- Harvard, Princetown, Yale, uCLA and many others have so bad teachers that you can either close them or find real intelligent brilliant teachers. And stop taking money from the muslim racists
john magee says
Well said.
James Lincoln says
maria,
A student can learn more useful information from a good community college in a conservative state than in today’s communist Ivy League colleges…
gravenimage says
“Political correctness” at its most stupid.
RonaldB says
West’s students might not like it much more if West actually tried to prepare for his classes. He’s a faux academic, a poseur, and a raconteur. He has absolutely no academic publications, other than his original book on post-modernism. A defining characteristic of post-modernism is you have to be very sure you don’t say anything that is actually subject to being checked. It must be exhausting to have to publish post-modern material, and once West jumped on the affirmative-action train, he either couldn’t or wouldn’t put out the effort. I saw him in a debate with Candace Owens, and she chewed him up and spit him out. His real strength is in sprouting leftist platitudes to admiring leftist minions, not engaging in a genuine contest of wits.
James Lincoln says
RonaldB,
I saw the debate West had with Candace Owens.
West looked like a low IQ, wild-eyed, triggered, complete fool.
Candace was spectacular, as usual…
gravenimage says
I need to look for that debate.
mortimer says
So, Cornel ordered a committee (that does not have board-level by-law authority) to change the by-laws so that he could have a ‘SPECIAL STATUS’
Then, Cornel blamed the committee for not exceeding its legal competence and Cornel then declared his moral victory of the secret Zionist cabal. No matter how absurd and slanderous this slander is, many simple-minded people will believe it, because a black ‘college professor’ (with official victim status) has posited the claim.
Such claims are immediately believed by the naïve, half-cocked herds of the fascist Cancel Culture.
Keith O says
Mortimer, this sums up the situation fairly well.
The more I read and thought about West the more his behavior seemed familiar, he reminds me of someone I used to know who was diagnosed as a megalomaniac with narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies.
On a lighter note, his name, Cornel, sounds like a nut you find on a tree. coincidence?
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
The Ivy League University model is on the wane. It is a relic and an antique of a bygone era. The real university powerhouses are those that have aligned themselves with corporations willing to partner with and support schools that welcome their support.
The new model joins capital and intellectual greatness under one roof. They have little time or patience to entertain the likes of doddering Uncle Corny with his racist and anti-semitic rants and blackmail.
Duane Mo tez says
Weasel
Wellington says
Cornel West is not a true intellectual but a histrionic pseudo-intellectual. Damn dishonest too about many matters.
gravenimage says
+1
David Longfellow says
Good for anyone who had any hand in West’s denial of tenure. Of course “the Jews” didn’t. This article exposes him for what he is, a liar through and through.
Onesaffronladoftherisingsun says
ATTENTION ATTENTION ATTENTION
Just here to share an important update with respect to some developments going on for past couple of weeks.
All is not well between India and the usa. Recent happenings confirm this. While there’s some semblance of continuity in the strategic relationship from the Trump Administration, Our External Affairs Minister , S Jaishankar sounds convinced that the Democrats are fanning the half dyk protests and poking their nose in our internal matters..
Biden has members of his team with affiliations to all sorts of international political entities (such as the Vatican, Christian Democratic Party of Germany, even the CCP, etc); but they specifically screened out Indian-origin people with BJP/RSS “links”. Why? Because the Biden administration sees the BJP and RSS as hostile political organizations.
It confirms many of our worst expectations from the Biden regime. Lack of a “waiver” for the S-400 purchase is only the beginning. But if Kamala Biden continue to press this whorecry. India won’t let a good sanction go to waste. It will place orders for more quantitative Russian systems, such as Armata, anti-ship missiles, and possibly even re-approach the Russians to give AMCA an engine or other nations like france.
This is why there’s zero enthusiasm in India over the abcd -uncle tom population in this administration.
As a fellow democratic nation, america should learn to trust India’s institutions and Indian people who have the power of vote.
We do what we have to, the americans will be committing both suicide and murder of the India-us relations if they go down the sanctions route.
Even if biden feels embarrassed to take quad forward.. aus / Japan are firmly against china and triad would be more than enough to counter bat munchers. It will still be overmatch for China.
Good fucking luck .
Kepha says
Behold, it’s all over the NOOOOOZ!
Cornall West’s blaming the JOOOOOOZ!
He so loudly he cried
Over tenure denied.
I think he is just full of booooooze!
To be honest, I gave up on an academic career when the mere mechanics of publishing (only one publication can consider your paper at a time, and you wait months only to find you’re rejected by a reviewer who doesn’t know that Theodore de beze and Theodore beza were the same man) seemed too much to take; and then I saw how many utter mountebanks of the Cornell West variety staffed the most prestigious schools. As far as STEM disciplines go, the academy is dying..
Valkyrie Ziege says
; Some folks need to realize that real life isn’t run by the “Make A Wish Foundation”. Another very good idea is some folks need to read their work-contract(s), and if any contract(s) are too confusing to comprehend, than hire a contracts lawyer.
Problem solved.
gravenimage says
It’s No Surprise Cornel West Would Blame the Jews For His Not Receiving Tenure
……………….
Cornel West is an antisemitic clown.
Inspired Infidel says
300 years from now historians will still be studying why American farmers brought African laborers to the United States.
RichardL says
see it from West’s point: everybody tells him that he is amazing, for decades he gets jobs at the most prestigious universities, and he never has to delivers anything, conform to any rules. From his perspective, this comes out of nowhere; he probably never understood the difference between tenure and teaching track and someone remarked on it after seeing the contract. He wanted to be a scholar – like we all want to be the thing we are not. Rather than looking at his teaching evals, we should be looking at his Google Scholar results. They are embarrassing.