Cornel West, a leading progressive activist who recently resigned from his position at Harvard University’s Divinity School, on Tuesday suggested discrimination forced him to leave.
West’s comments came in a Tuesday tweet where he shared his resignation letter, which was dated June 30.
“This is my candid letter of resignation to my Harvard Dean," he tweeted. "I try to tell the unvarnished truth about the decadence in our market-driven universities! Let us bear witness against this spiritual rot."
In his resignation letter, he commented on how sad it was "to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay.
"The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of previous students loom large. When I arrived four years ago – with a salary less than what I received 15 years earlier and with no tenure status after being a university professor at Harvard and Princeton – I hoped and prayed I could still end my career with some semblance of intellectual intensity and personal respect. How wrong I was!" he added.
“With a few glorious and glaring exceptions, the shadow of Jim Crow was cast in its new glittering form expressed in the language of superficial diversity: all my courses were subsumed under Afro-American Religious Studies including those on Existentialism, American Democracy and The Conduct of Life, no possible summer salary alongside the lowest increase possible every year.
“Yet I delivered two convocation addresses and one commencement speech in four years. I was promised a year sabbatical but could only take one semester in practice.”
He said when an announcement of his mother's death appeared in a newsletter, he received only two public replies.
“Any ordinary announcement about a lecture, award or professional advancement receives about 10 replies,” he said.
The Hill noted that West had announced in March he would be leaving Harvard and moving to the Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
His resignation came after Harvard rejected West's request to change his nontenured position at the university to a tenured one.
A spokesman for the Divinity School told The Washington Post on Tuesday the school had no comment on Dr. West’s letter.”
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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