Academic Sharptonism

Cornel West's return to Princeton seems to have been acclaimed as the greatest faculty acquisition since Albert Einstein. On closer investigation of West's record, however, the wisdom of Princeton's no-holds-barred campaign to recruit him becomes a little bit blurrier. In particular, West's tactics in his recent dispute with Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, in which he turned an admonition about his short publication list into a racial incident, threatens a kind of academic Sharptonism that can only be a threat to freedom of inquiry at Princeton University.

The Tilghman Administration was clearly desperate to bring Professor West to Princeton. Once trouble began brewing between West and Summers, Princeton Administrators tripped over themselves to coax West and others from Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department to be part of an effort to "aggressively" improve Princeton's own African-American studies lineup. Among other enticements, Princeton dangled the possibility of an African-American Studies research institute, in the style of Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute.

Yet it is precisely the manner in which Professor West made his exit from Harvard that should give us pause. Following the now-infamous meeting in which President Summers expressed concern about West's sparse publications record, inflated grades, and release of a rap CD rather than a book last November, West and others threatened to leave for Princeton and publicly attacked Summers for expressing an insufficient commitment to affirmative action in Harvard's admission process. Before long the Rev. Jesse Jackson descended on Harvard to score some headlines and clear up the "misunderstanding." Unsurpris-ingly, Summers promptly recanted and West stayed — but only for a while.

West's instant move to racialize his conflict with Summers was unfair and destructive. Racism is a problem that cannot be underestimated, but in some academic circles a charge of "racism" — however outlandish — has much the same effect as one of "communism" in the early 1950s. To imply racism on the part of President Summers because he tried — if feebly — to insist on a little bit of accountability from his faculty is a manipulative smear tactic. That a University President should face such political bullying in response to perfectly reasonable concern about the performance of one of his 17 highest-ranked faculty members, is surely not the kind of institutional dynamic we want imported to Nassau Hall. Academics, even respected ones, ought not to engage in racial theatrics designed to embarrass administrators into uttering political positions (on affirmative action or anything else) as the price of retaining them on the faculty.

Yet racial power plays are familiar ground for Professor West. Insofar as he may be judged by the company he keeps, we ought to remember that Professor West chairs the Rev. Al Sharpton's Presidential Exploratory Committee. Only a brief sampling of the supposed civil rights leader's demagogic antics — trying to frame New York Prosecutor Steven Pagones for the rape of Tawana Brawley in 1987, stirring up New York City's bloody Crown Heights riots in 1991, denouncing a Jewish landlord in Harlem as "a white interloper" thereby provoking the famous "Freddy's Fashion Mart Massacre" in 1995, yet somehow emerging as a political power broker and supposed key to New York City's African-American vote in the late 1990s — suffices to show that Professor West happily associates himself with those who exploit race as a political weapon.

Professor West should not be shut out of Princeton because of his political or intellectual views. However his conduct is equally important: the pattern of behavior West demonstrated at Harvard represents a potential threat to academic freedom at Princeton. Despite Summers' pliancy and attempts at damage control for fear of losing one of his biggest-name professors the bottom line is that Summers' demand for performance from his faculty was countered with strident racial stigmatization and protests by Reverends Sharpton and Jackson.

What will happen if Professor West meets with accountability at Princeton University? Will Nassau Hall's affirmative action policy suddenly become as suspect as Harvard's did, or will West be free from any kind of accountability, able to publish as few books and as many CDs as he likes? Moreover, what about the voices of those at Princeton who might disagree with Professor West's controversial views? Will they be met with a barrage of criticism similar to that levied at President Summers? Insofar as the threat of academic Sharptonism goes, it remains unclear whether Princeton or Harvard has emerged as winner in the Cornel West saga. Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky is from New York, NY. He can be reached at cr@princeton.edu.