Cornel West

Peer review is a pillar of academe, which makes the tense standoff between Harvard President Lawrence Summers and Harvard superstar professor Cornel West all the more unfortunate and ridiculous ("The Summers of Harvard U.'s Black Discontent," Commentary, Jan. 11). As institutions of higher learning, universities are centers of debate and engines in the search for truth and objectivity. West's uneasiness with the constructive feedback of Summers, however, reveals that some professors refuse to adhere to even minimal professional standards.

After reading the report, we certainly know The Times' editorial position on this subject but we read nothing about the alternatives to the current failing "civil rights" movement. As far as The Times is concerned, black conservatives like Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele and, yes, Clarence Thomas are Uncle Toms or, worse, the dupes of Republican bigots. Cornel West ("Why Haven't They Matched the Success of Others?") states the solution to racism and the economic plight of poor blacks as seen by the left.

I eagerly dove into Peter H. King's article "Searching for a Legacy" (April 21). I am very disappointed in what I found. King's strongest analysis of the cause of the 1992 Los Angeles riots is "frustration and self-defeating anger and an instinct for anarchy." An instinct for anarchy? Although the article refers to the Rodney King beating, it only briefly touches on the verdict in favor of the police officers who carried out the beating. King assumes that his audience knows this information, but many young adults may not or would not be able to infer it from his quote from Vera Tenenbaum: "It was after the King trial, Rodney King."

The future is bleak for democracy in America, a well-known author said at Cal State Fullerton recently, but he will go down fighting for it. Cornel West, a professor of religion and African American studies at Harvard University and author of the best-selling book "Race Matters," urged an audience of about 700 last week to fight along with him. Democracy, he said, is the "precious notion" of "lifting everybody's voices."

Harvard University scholar Cornel West said the school's president was largely responsible for his move to Princeton but that too much has been made of their dispute. After giving a lecture Saturday at Ramapo College, West spoke to reporters about "the push of Harvard and pull of Princeton"--and said Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was the push. But he said Harvard's tradition is bigger than any one faculty member or disagreement.

BEWARE OF FACULTY WITH TENURE. Many a principal hired to turn around a lackluster public school has learned that lesson the hard way -- sometimes by losing his job. Now Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, who announced his resignation this week, has experienced it for himself.

Of course Lawrence Summers, the rookie president of Harvard, was going to get in trouble. As a New Democrat-ish alumnus of the Clinton administration, he was well to the right of the Harvard campus, where the ideological spectrum runs mostly from New Left to Old Left. In other words, Summers was already under suspicion when he trespassed into further political incorrectness. First, he criticized grade inflation and then he took on black studies.

In the spring of 1992, Deborah Chasman, then a 28-year-old editor at Beacon Press in Boston, flew to Princeton University to meet with Cornel West. A professor of religion and political science, West had established himself as perhaps the country's preeminent left-wing thinker, and Chasman hoped to persuade him to put together a collection of essays.

Wake up, America, you are being exploited, duped and brainwashed. Though political analysts — left and right — differ on their prescriptions on how to save America from decline, there is one thing they seem to agree on: The vast majority of Americans spend most of their lives politically asleep. Crossroads GPS, an advocacy group founded by Republican operative Karl Rove, recently produced a commercial called "Wake Up," an anti-Obama attack ad that portrays a woman tossing and turning in the middle of the night who then sits up and reflects on how her faith in President Obama has been betrayed.