51–60 of 108 posts
His resignation letter chastises the school for not giving enough attention to his mother's death-- he only got two condolences. Does this strike anyone else as a really strange thing to bring up a tally of condolences in a resignation letter?
One wonders if he had gotten tenure and received much beloved public replies he would resign thereafter.
Yikes, the writing in that letter was not up to par for a professor who was seeking tenure at a prestigious university. The tone, word choice, layout, everything felt amateur and overly emotional. I haven't read many resignation letters but I'd have expected more polish and professionalism.
He's hardly a professor. He's contributed no meaningful research in his field and by my own recollection he only ever appears when he makes headlines for saving something extremely racist, or extremely harsh. He's a divisive figure and a celebrity "philosopher". A literal nobody. It comes to me, and anyone else with experience an academia, that such a washout would never make tenure. Even at a "woke" academic institu…
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He means that his colleagues at the Divinity School don't seem to care enough about him to send him a condolence for his mother's death. It's about the apathetic work environment at the school. That would be a problem for me, too, at my company if I chose to disclose that via a public email. Hell, I have several colleagues that wish me well when I have a cold.
Especially for a Divinity School, his point is that it marks a fundamental departure from the spirituality and community that made the school special at some point.
Whether that is Spiritual Bankruptcy, or merely Indifference, I know not, but it definitely reflects a culture problem of sorts.
The best workplaces do not involve parking your humanity or caring at the door.
Reading the letter I see a few extremely salient complaints:
1. His first complaint is that he was a token diversity hire. Instead of his courses being placed in the general coursework section, his courses were put under 'African American' religious studies. As many minorities know, this is a way of discounting minority viewpoints. No one would dare dream put a history class taught by a white professor under the 'European American studies' portion. If he's teaching a course supposedly on American democracy, then surely it should go under history or social sciences, not 'black people social sciences'.
2. Failure to compensate an appropriate amount given West's celebrity status. Again, I don't particularly like West's politics, but he is clearly quite the celebrity. It seems he was not compensated appropriately, despite Harvard being happy to use his celebrity status to further their own reputation. Pretty standard employee complaint.
3. His tenure application was denied despite Harvard asking him to leave an existing tenured professorship. He believes his application was denied not due to his teaching but because Harvard disagreed with one of his political views. Again, as much as I disagree with West's politics, it seems incredibly disingenuous to profit off of a new employee's celebrit, tempt him to join you from a stable job with promises of future stability, and then to deny him tenureship because he has differing opinions on some random issue.
4. Despite supposedly wanting a close faculty, no one in the faculty would stand up for him when his tenure was denied. The fact of his mother's death not soliciting any response was not brought up in isolation as other comments claim (current top comment does). It was brought up in reference to the fact that no one on faculty would dare speak up to the administration on his behalf and it seemed like, after tenure was denied for his beliefs on Palestine, he was ostracized from his department. Many academics know that being ostracized in your department is not good.
5. Furthermore, it seemed that Harvard has a problem in not focusing on the whole person. Instead, it's developed into a technocratic institution (which I know from personal knowledge, West decries).
So yeah, all the people saying this is only about his mother or because of palestine are either being incredibly dense or purposely deceitful.
Again, I disagree with basically everything West stands for, but I agree with him that he shouldn't essentially be exploited and then canceled. That goes against every shred of common decency.
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No, the death of a parent (depending on one's relationship) can be incredibly devastating. It is certainly appropriate to bring that to work, because it will almost always impact one's performance. Is it strange for folks to talk about a newborn child, or marriage at work? Conversely, what about infant death or divorce? Can you bring your "whole self" or just the good news?
I think it is one thing to "bring that to work" and another to expect condolences. Weren't there truly any better reasons to resign? If no, then I think Harvard is really a good place to work.
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kind of ironic that cornel west releases his resignation letter and meanwhile we get some new account calling him a nobody. at least use your main account to say such things. anyway - addressing your comment itself. doesn't he now have tenure at UTS? Wasn't he also tenured previously at Princeton and Yale? hardly a nobody lmao
He didn't hold tenure at any prestigious university he held professorship. There's a lot of nobodies who get associate at these institutions especially in the fields of philosophy and social science. UTS is an absolute nobody school. It's like graduating from ASU - no one will ever take you seriously. He's just an old bigot going home to roost.
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No, the death of a parent (depending on one's relationship) can be incredibly devastating. It is certainly appropriate to bring that to work, because it will almost always impact one's performance. Is it strange for folks to talk about a newborn child, or marriage at work? Conversely, what about infant death or divorce? Can you bring your "whole self" or just the good news?
I think it is one thing to "bring that to work" and another to expect condolences. Weren't there truly any better reasons to resign? If no, then I think Harvard is really a good place to work.
But, if that doesn't make sense to you, how about being systematically passed over for a promotion because of your political views?
It's hard not to see this as being a crappy place to work if you put yourself in his shoes.
His resignation letter chastises the school for not giving enough attention to his mother's death-- he only got two condolences. Does this strike anyone else as a really strange thing to bring up a tally of condolences in a resignation letter?
No, the death of a parent (depending on one's relationship) can be incredibly devastating. It is certainly appropriate to bring that to work, because it will almost always impact one's performance. Is it strange for folks to talk about a newborn child, or marriage at work? Conversely, what about infant death or divorce? Can you bring your "whole self" or just the good news?
Now that I have kids, I think back every now and again to when I was in high school and my math teacher's wife miscarried fairly far along into the pregnancy. Looking back, I'm sure that was absolutely devastating for him, but as a class I don't think we gave it a second thought.
I feel bad about that. Kids just have no concept of how big a loss that is. Hopefully the staff was more sympathetic about it.
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Do you think the Department of Philosophy is retro as well? Theology has shaped humanity, wouldn't it be weird for a school as prestigious as Harvard to not have a school for it?
Most of the ideas within Theology are ideas that went on to become known as Philosophy (for proof: Christian theology came after Philosophy but Aristotle was regarded as the authority on basically everything for pre-Reformation theologians, despite him not being a Christian or having anything to with Christianity...this also occurred in Judaism and Islam). There are obviously topics that are fairly inseparable from r…
I think some are focusing on his mother's death; it's the straw the broke the camel's back but the root cause is apathy towards him. They are however, ignoring the part where he was declined tenure for no good reason, and despite being a professor at other prestigious universities. He was also paid badly and was treated poorly when it came to sabbaticals. In other words he was sidelined for no good reason. This is sa…
Why do we tell academics they have to stay in one place forever once they get tenure? Don't they want to move around as much as anyone else? Maybe his reason was just that he wanted a change.