The Sprint PCS cell phone box peaking out of a brown Whalen Moving & Storage carton in the corner of this mahogany Class of 1879 Hall office — its bookcases overflowing with tomes of every philosophy — perfectly depicts the epochal enigma who is Professor West.
He is schooled in old ways, but he knows what's in vogue.
A cell phone is ultramodern for Professor West. Influenced by black preachers he met at church growing up in Sacramento, Professor West delivers sermon-like lectures and dresses to match: in dark three-piece suits that brandish a dangling silver watch chain. He does not use computers or email. Most of all, philosophy and religion are what he's about at school.
But Professor West may also be the hippest professor. He'll appear in the next two sequels of the 1999 blockbuster "The Matrix" as "Counselor West." He has performed on and produced a rap (or "spoken-word," as he calls it) compact disc, "Sketches of My Culture," and has appeared on innumerable television and radio shows.
Neither of these hats, if fit around his considerable afro, makes Cornel West GS '80 the Professor, however. What makes him Professor West is the explosion of emotion he causes wherever he goes. As one of the most controversial and provocative Americans to speak on the issue of race, West is a lightening rod whose ideas incite passions, for and against.
Now he's here, again. Interviewed recently at his new office in the religion department, West discussed his journey back to Princeton and why he has become the Professor.
It's a voyage he describes in terms of being pushed away from Harvard University, where he went to college and taught for eight years, and being pulled to Princeton, where he attended graduate school and taught for six years until 1994.
It's also a voyage that has touched a raw nerve in higher education. It challenged students and faculty to ask what kinds of schools they want to have, what they want to accomplish with education and to what lengths they'll go to achieve their goals.
A public intellectual
Sitting behind his simple desk with dozens of pink message slips in neat piles on top of manila envelopes, West speaks with his inviting voice and hands and arms moving in sweeping arches.
Filling the office — about the size of a dorm room single — are hundreds of books recently brought here from Harvard. Most books are filed with their spines showing. But those few books which display their authors on their covers, are turned so they watch over West. West likes to think that minds like Robert Wright, Tolstoy and Wilke are supporting him.
Studying the ideas of great men and women and then channeling them into provocative thought, he says, is his main goal. He says he is visible because of his extracurricular activities in politics and pop culture. But all the publicity he gets — which he says is sometimes too much — comes after his curricular pursuits.
"It's difficult to understand," he explains, discussing his position as an educator who wishes to challenge convictions. "I am first and foremost a reader and teacher concerned with unsettling and un-housing citizens."
To most outsiders, his role as public intellectual seems to trump his role as professor — though, according to his students, it doesn't diminish that role. At Harvard, where he taught an introductory course on African-American studies, his lectures would draw more than 700 students. The freshmen taking his seminar this fall give him rave reviews.
West became a public intellectual in 1993, one year after the L.A. riots, when he published a bruising assessment of race in the United States, "Race Matters." It's since then, he says, that he has started to get so much attention. Indeed, he's written 12 other books. Popping his full name into the Google search engine yields 21,200 hits.
"Race Matters" was a national bestseller that argued the major reason for poor race relations in the United States is that American society has led to nihilism in the black community: "the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness and (most important) lovelessness."
West criticized the approaches of conservatives and liberals alike. "Unfortunately," he wrote, "these two camps have nearly suffocated the debate that should be taking place about the prospects for black America." His suggestion: a democratic, grassroots effort to restore political and social hope.
Thinking about learning
The publication of "Race Matters" and the ensuing publicity made West an unofficial spokesman for African-Americans and race relations in the United States. West regularly joins Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to protest organizations that are accused of discrimination. He is also a leader of the slave reparations movement.
His views on race and democracy underscore a broader point about his philosophy — a point that was fundamental in West's very public decision last year to bolt Harvard.
According to his friend and former student David Carrasco, now a Harvard religion professor but previously a professor here, West believes education has a social goal.
"West embraces a love of knowledge and education," Carrasco said. "But he also insists that it have a social purpose . . . as a means for the enlargement of democracy."
These basic beliefs provided an initial source of tension with Lawrence Summers, who became Harvard's president in July 2001. At Harvard, West was already part of a "dream team" of African-American scholars, including K. Anthony Appiah, now a Princeton professor of philosophy, and Henry Louis Gates, chair of Harvard's Afro-American studies department.
In his inaugural address, Summers parted ways with West, emphasizing that education is a purely pedagogical exercise.
"The practical effectiveness of what we do must never obscure what is most special and distinctive about universities," he said. "They are communities in which truth — veritas — is pursued first and last as an end it itself — not for any tangible reward or worldly impact."
This philosophical difference wouldn't have been enough to drive West from the "dream team." It took a personal clash.
West was one of Harvard's 14 University Professors — esteemed intellectuals who don't belong to any one department. They report directly to the president. So in an ordinary meeting in fall 2001, West and Summers — both opinionated, strong personalities — came face to face.
Summers apparently wasn't happy with the extracurricular pursuits West believed were central to his professorship. He reportedly accused West of inflating grades and missing too many classes, while West said Summers was not offering enough support for affirmative action.
West was insulted by Summers' comments and floated the idea he might leave if Summers didn't try to improve relations.
Since before President Tilghman began her administration last June, there had been an offer out to West to come to Princeton. Tilghman and Provost Amy Gutmann set a deadline of April 13 for him to decide. West had been neutral until the sparring with Summers began.
In the meantime, Gutmann orchestrated the hiring of Appiah to bolster Princeton's African-American studies program, which doesn't award degrees to students but only certificates.
West wasn't ready to jump ship just yet. He had forged close friendships at Harvard.
" 'Skip' [Henry Louis Gates], Anthony [Appiah] and I are very close. We care deeply about each other," he says. "When one of us leaves, we've got to shed some tears."
West was still fuming, however, for being "dishonored" and wanted an apology. He says he got one in a later meeting that apparently relaxed tensions.
But when Summers denied apologizing in an interview with The New York Times, West exploded. Relations between the two were permanently destroyed. West knew he had to go.
But he doesn't blame Summers completely, suggesting there is a wider epidemic at Harvard that goes all the way to the board of trustees. "Somebody had to choose President Summers," West said. "He didn't appoint himself."
Princeton moves in
It also took great effort from Princeton to lure him here. West says Tilghman and Gutmann provided strong leadership, calling him once every 10 days. "Princeton is a much better place than Harvard in light of its leadership," he said.
He first met Tilghman at the installation of Ruth Simmons of Brown University, the first female Ivy League president. They immediately hit it off. With Tilghman at the helm, West says, "Princeton [has had] a mature way of relating to people."
Just how he disagreed with the philosophy of Summers, West agreed with Tilghman and Gutmann about how education works.
"Shirley [Tilghman] and Amy Gutmann have a vision of what it is to be good citizens at Princeton and in the larger society," he said.
Gutmann agreed. "Learning for its own sake and for the sake of social justice are both eminently worthy pursuits," she said. "[Princeton] aims to educate leaders with a sense of social responsibility based on the broadest level of learning at the university level."
The news that West would return came on Friday, April 12. Princeton had tried to play down his appointment before it was made on April 13 by the board of trustees — one that was unanimous, said Vice President and Secretary Thomas Wright '62. But intense media pressure descended on Princeton as West continuously and publicly hinted at his decision.
According to one expert, Cynthia Garcia Coll, chair of Brown's education department, issues of prestige and race contributed to the intense speculation over whether West would leave.
Minority professors "are brought in sometimes because there is some talk among higher institutions that we need to do diversity," Garcia Coll said briefly after the appointment. "Most academics at the level of the professor are into notions of power and reputation."
Because of the relatively small number of African-American scholars available to teach, she said "a culture of competition" has begun to emerge. "When you get to be at the level of professor West, you sort of feel like a commodity."
Some professors questioned whether he should have got so much publicity. English professor John Fleming, opining in The Daily Princetonian in April, wrote: "So far as I know it is at the very least highly unusual, and probably unprecedented, for the hiring of a professor from one Ivy institution to another to be the protracted subject of middlebrow media attention. But Cornel West styles himself a 'public intellectual' and by making public what is usually a quite private transaction, he inevitably invites public comment."
"But, sadly," he wrote, "one can hardly doubt that faculty recruitment of the next century will come more and more to adopt the conventions of professional athletics and broadcast news, including publicity agents, unofficial spokesmen, unconscionable salaries, trash talk and the cruel victory of surface over substance."
Students were generally split on his appointment. Shena Elrington '04, speaking on behalf of the Black Student Union, was very excited. "Without a doubt, Professor West will contribute to the intellectual climate of the University," she said.
Opposition abounds
But not everyone was so excited. When asked, most professors declined to comment, citing the fear that they would get involved in a polarizing dialogue about his appointment.
"Cornel West is a one-man advertising machine," said Robert Hollander '55, an Italian professor. "Anybody who recruits him is going to get dragged into the eye of his media storm. You can't blame the Princeton administration for the media storm. You can wonder what they thought they were doing."
Alumni who wrote to Princeton Alumni Weekly on the issue of his appointment were overwhelmingly against it. Of the 28 letters featured, 20 opposed it. One particular alumnus, Howard Stoner '54, expressed "outrage."
"Like a bad penny — or, more accurately, like a bad dream — he's back again," Stoner wrote. "West is a racist rabble-rouser of the worst kind. He's a fraud, not a scholar. He's a megalomaniac with a radical agenda."
West got considerable criticism for comparing Summers to the "Ariel Sharon of higher education" in The New York Times. Four Princeton professors wrote to The Times to chastise West for insensitive comments, especially since Summers is Jewish.
Gutmann defended West's right to say what he believes in April, saying he is a strong teacher whose politics will only enhance campus debate.
"[West] has always been, as a teacher, a very unifying presence, and we don't really judge professors by their politics. A variety of political views are to be expected, and they're what make academic freedom wonderful," she said. "[To be] provocative is good intellectually, and we think best when we're provoked."
Across Ivy
West made the long trek across the Ivy League and now starts his life anew at a school that's quieter than his former dwelling. He is teaching a freshman seminar this term, exploring the subject of evil in comedy and tragedy — a topic which will also form the basis for a book he's working on.
"Princeton always has been a kind of family for me. [It's] much better than I deserve on every level," he says. When he got the chance to teach a seminar, he "jumped at the opportunity."
"[It's] a challenge to me and a challenge to them," he says, but it's "wonderful."
Next term, he'll reenter the African-American studies program to teach a course on modern literary texts by luminaries such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison.
Christopher Principe '06, a student in West's seminar, described the first session as an exciting three hours that lived up to his expectations. West lectured for two hours, he said, and then students entered into discussion.
"I've never had anybody hold my attention for two hours," Principe said. "[But] he really grabs your attention and doesn't let go."
Reflecting on AAS
Just as West ponders important questions about philosophy this term, Princeton still must confront critical questions about its African-American studies program.
It still has to consider whether to turn it into a full-fledged department and join the ranks of all other Ivy League schools. West says he supports a department, though he welcomes the interdisciplinary nature of Princeton, something he contrasts to Harvard's "fragmented" structure.
And Princeton still has to find out whether the "dream team" transfer will complete with Henry Louis Gates.
Princeton had pursued Gates actively, and, according to West and Appiah, discussed the possibility of creating an African-American studies research center here — to match the W.E.B. Du Bois center at Harvard — with him. Valerie Smith, chair of Princeton's AAS program, also said such a center is under discussion, though Gutmann declined to say whether it was part of the offer, either now or in April, when the 'Prince' reported one was under discussion.
Gates — who couldn't be reached for comment — said this summer he would wait till the end of the academic year to make a decision about leaving. But West has said several times that Gates is "leaning" toward joining Princeton, though there is great "pressure" on him to stay, according to Appiah.
'The Journey'
More than a hundred students applied for West's freshman seminar, which has 12 students. Students, curious about just who he is, will likely continue to pile into his future classes.
But his presence also probably will be felt outside the classroom. There are no signs that the activism that has gotten him so much attention in the past will slow down.
But whether protesting or pondering, it's been a journey for Professor West from ghettos to the highest levels of academia. He has great defenders and great opponents — but what he feels he's all about is abundantly clear from the first lines of the "The Journey," the first track of his album:
"Let the word go forth for now / That the struggle for freedom is still alive / And the story of that struggle is still being told."
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