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Cornel West dropped his fiery resignation letter from Harvard on social media months after he abandoned his fight for tenure at the Ivy League institution.
Dated June 30, West’s letter comes after a long struggle for tenure status at the Harvard Divinity School. Tenure grants an academic a permanent position at a university. Typically, a tenured instructor is only terminated under special circumstances like misconduct, financial restraints, or an academic department’s dissolution.
“How sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay,” he wrote. “The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large.”
According to The New York Times, the esteemed scholar has had a long history with Harvard, which is also his alma mater. West started teaching at the university in 1994 and was a tenured professor when he left in 2002. The departure followed a public dispute with Lawrence Summers, who was president of Harvard at the time. He also held tenured positions at Princeton and Yale, per The Washington Post.
West returned to Harvard after he took a nontenured position in 2017, which paid less than what he earned 15 years ago, per his resignation letter. He expressed he hoped to receive tenure status again but eventually lost hope.
“I hoped and prayed I could still end my career with some semblance of intellectual intensity and personal respect,” he wrote. “How wrong I was!”
“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,” West added.
He went on to accuse Harvard of mislabeling his courses as Afro-American Religious Studies, denying him summer salary and being slow to award pay raises. He also claimed the administration was anti-Palestine.
Toward the end of the letter, West wrote news of his mother’s death received two responses while an announcement related to a professional achievement typically received about 20 replies.
“This kind of narcissistic academic professionalism, cowardly deference to the anti-Palestinian prejudices of the Harvard administration and indifference to my mother’s death constitute an intellectual an spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths,” he wrote.
West originally threatened to leave in March and told the New York Times tenure is the difference between “first-class citizenship and second-class citizenship in the academy.”
“I refuse to go through the back door,” he added. “I am about ready to pack my bags.”
He believed his age and support of Palestine’s liberation affected Harvard’s decision. He pointed to a larger issue affecting Black academics.
“More than anything else, there’s a certain disrespect for Black scholars and taboo issues that don’t allow us to have a robust and respectful dialogue,” he said. “And both of those are very much tied to the way in which the university’s become commodified. It’s a money-driven institution, and it’s sad.”
Harvard has not spoken publicly about West’s departure.