Brother West (30 page)
Meanwhile, large numbers of students and certain faculty members—especially Professors David Carrasco and Randy Matory—were vocal in their support of me. A search was made that showed I had more academic references in academic professional journals than all other black scholars in the country with the exception of my Harvard colleague, friend, and fellow University Professor William Wilson. It was pointed out that I had more academic references than fourteen of the other seventeen Harvard University Professors, and, ironically, I had twice as many as Summers himself. In the beginning, the press seemed interested in beating up on me, but when the facts were made clear and the truth came out, the media became more critical of Summers. Seeing that he may have messed up, Summers called me for another meeting.
I was back in his office. He began with sincere questions about my health. I told him that I appreciated his concern, and that I was hopeful all would be well. I was surprised and moved to learn that he had once fought cancer, survived, and showed distinctive courage in the battle. All was cordial.
“I want to thank you for not playing the race card during this entire unfortunate episode,” Summers said.
“In America,” I said, “the whole deck is full of race cards. In this instance, though, other issues were at stake.”
“I want to apologize to you, Professor West,” he added.
“I accept your apology, Professor Summers, but I do want you to know that your accusations against me somehow authorized an army of right-wing and even neo-liberal writers to vent a flood of pent-up hostility in my direction. They have tried to destroy me.”
“I want to apologize to you again, Professor West.”
“I appreciate that, and again, I accept your apology.”
That should have been that. But it wasn’t. The next day, the
New York Times
went front-page with a story about our meeting, indicating that Summers had
not
apologized and, in fact, hadn’t budged an inch from his original position. I immediately picked up the phone and called the president’s office.
“Professor Summers,” I said, “I’m sure you’ve seen the
Times.
Am I crazy, or did you or did you not apologize to me at least twice?”
“I did, Professor West,” he assured me. “The reporter just got it wrong.”
A little later, a contact of mine called and said, “Corn, I talked to the
Times
reporter. The reporter says that during the interview with Summers, Summers adamantly insisted that he never apologized to you—and never would. I’m afraid Summers is giving you the run-around.”
The press wanted to know my version and this time I didn’t hold back. I was ready with an analogy: “Larry Summers,” I said, “is the Ariel Sharon of American higher education. The man’s arrogant, he’s an ineffective leader, and when it comes to these sorts of delicate situations, he’s a bull in the China shop.”
That led to counter-accusations that I was being anti-Semitic. I had heard those charges when I backed Minister Farrakhan’s Million Man March and when I, along with my friend Rabbi Lerner, went to jail in opposition to Sharon’s oppressive Palestinian policies. In any event, I wrote off Summers as a man I could never trust. That was a sad conclusion, but sadder still was the big picture that was finally coming into focus.
After this controversy had raged on for months, I was amazed at how few faculty members and journalists were actually interested in getting to the truth. When rumors started flying, why didn’t the faculty members simply call me to ask what had really happened? Why didn’t the journalists covering the story come to the source rather than repeat the false innuendos? My conclusion was that the academy was more spineless than ever, and the press was more intoxicated with sensationalizing than substantiating. I was also amazed how few observers got the bigger point. This was, in essence, a debate about the place and purpose of the university in the American empire. Here I was, a professor who had been tenured at Yale, Princeton, and Harvard, a scholar with more publications than 95 percent of his colleagues. Suddenly this professor was being bullied by a university president. This professor was being told how to live his intellectual life. Don’t do hip-hop. Don’t write for mainstream journals. Restrict your audience to academics. Watch whom you campaign for. And submit to my scrutiny. Submit to my technocratic vision of higher education.
From my perspective, Professor Summers can express any views he likes on every subject from affirmative action to Israeli-Palestinian relations. And what better place to debate those issues than a free and open university, rather than one run by an administrator dealing in threats and blatant disrespect? The issue was academic freedom. Yet only an article in
Vanity Fair
by Brother Sam Tananhaus about the controversy addressed that issue. Most of the others were mere gossip.
The even larger question goes to the nature of academic engagement. I see it as a split between the technocratic and the democratic view of intellectual life. I want to move away from narrow elitism and address the larger culture. I want to reach youth culture. Without sacrificing scholarly excellence, I want to bridge the gap between what’s happening in the ivory towers and what’s happening in the ’hoods. Young folk of all of colors and classes need to know that we’re concerned and involved in their lives. They need to feel that we’re listening to them, not just with our ears but our hearts. They deserve our attention. Our attention is an extension of our love, and without loving compassion, no real dialogue can be established.
The fact that Summers, as the first Jewish president of Harvard—a school with an anti-Semitic and racist legacy—did not feel the need to deal with me and the Afro-American department with respect and sensitivity was a major disappointment. Given the dynamic between blacks and Jews, especially in the world of intellectuals, Summers could have shown real leadership. You lead with respect, not scorn. You treat others honorably, not suspiciously. In the place of haughtiness, you offer curiosity, understanding, and a genuine desire to learn. That the dialogue broke down between me and Professor Summers saddened me deeply. I wish we could have worked it out. But we didn’t, and it was time for me to move on. How else could I respond to such deep disrespect? Nothing that Summers could say would eradicate the way he had dishonored me. And of course I never—not for a single instant—even considered acquiescing to the insulting monitoring program that he had demanded. The cool thing was to simply quit. But where would I go?
I’d first met my dear sister Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton, at the inauguration of my dear sister Ruth Simmons at Brown University. That was the day Professor Simmons became the first black president of an Ivy League school.
“Cornel,” Shirley said to me, “our door is always open to you.”
When I left Harvard, Shirley was good to her word.
“Come on home,” she said.
Her comment reminded me of when I originally came to Princeton to teach at the urging of Toni Morrison. The second time around, when Toni discovered that I was living in a house with no furniture, she graciously gave me a couch and two chairs.
In my discussions with Shirley, I saw that her visionary approach to higher education in many ways mirrored my own. I admired and adored her and, with gratitude, accepted the position— University Professor. The bluesman moves on.
W
HEN
I
WAS A YOUNG MAN
,
I heard an older brother say, “There are only three things in this world, son, that you gotta do—pay taxes, die, and stay black.”
The words stuck but the meaning took time to hit home.
After the legal, professional, and financial challenges facing me, the words hit home. And they hit hard. The tax issues were entangled with the love issues. Ever since I found myself sleeping in Central Park as a result of giving everything to my first wife, Hilda, I hadn’t gotten back on an even keel. Because I was the one who left the marriage—and in Aytul’s case, the relationship—it was especially important to me that my spouse not feel as though I was being anything less than generous. Unfortunately, that put me in a vulnerable position, particularly when lawyers were introduced into the equation.
On top of that, for years I had a bad case of the IRS blues. I got behind and could never catch up. I could give you lots of reasons why but, on the most fundamental level, I can’t excuse myself for creating a monetary mess. No matter how hard I tried, every year I found myself deeper in debt.
Someone once said, referencing James Brown, that “Cornel West is the Ivy League soul brother and the hardest working man in academia.” Naturally I loved the analogy, but I can hardly prove the statement. The distinguished cultural critic, Greg Tate, once wrote to me that my soulful, intellectual work was an extension of James Brown’s funk and Du Bois’s intellectual calling. Other profs teach lots of courses, give lots of lectures, write lots of books, and do lots of political and societal work. I can say, though, that my work ethic is as much a part of my being as my Christian faith. Hard work was instilled in me from the gate. That drive has been a blessing. At some point in my life, the drive was accelerated when it became married to a mission. The mission was connected to a passion that has grown stronger every year.
When I arrived at Harvard as a teenager, I went through the experience of being born again. The Christian connotation is not inappropriate. Academically, intellectually, and spiritually, I was willing to die to emerge a more courageous, loving, and decent human being. Old assumptions were challenged. I was introduced to new ways of thinking—ancient ways of thinking, modern ways of thinking, non-Western ways of thinking—that resulted in the reconstitution of my psyche. After Harvard, I’d never be the same again.
At the same time—praise God!—I found that the new me and the old me could sit side by side in the church of my grandfather. I had developed intense scrutiny, only to learn that precepts of my childhood faith measured up to the test—and then some. The lesson taught by my elders—the same lesson, in fact, that their elders taught them—was that love is the core of it all. The rest is just sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. To come from a people who were denigrated, enslaved, and despised, and still place love in the center of life is to be part of a miracle. To love myself without hating others—even and especially those who may harbor hatred for me—is another expression of that miracle.
My conclusion became my calling: that justice is what love looks like in public, just as deep democracy is what justice looks like in practice. When you love people, you hate the fact that they’re being treated unjustly. Justice is not simply an abstract concept to regulate institutions, but also a fire in the bones to promote the well-being of all.
Given my passion for love and its many healing forms, I have to ask myself these questions: why have I so often found myself in financial and romantic disrepair? Part of me wants to avoid the question and, instead, point to the successes that these women enjoyed after our relationship ended. I want to tell you that Elleni has become an international spokeswoman for the effort to conquer AIDS. The woman I met in a Howard Johnson restaurant so many years ago has emerged into a political leader who speaks in public before tens of thousands of people the world over. She is the head of the AIDS project at Harvard and often meets with the highest-ranking United Nations officials involved in solving the crisis. Stanford University has recognized her extraordinary work.
Hilda has had a number of careers, each more successful than the last. Today, she runs her own high-tech electronics firm and has become a businesswoman of ingenuity and integrity. Ramona is perhaps the most-loved schoolteacher in all of New York City, a shining light and positive influence in the lives of her many students.
Mary Johnson and Michele Wallace continue to make their mark in the highest of intellectual circles. And of course the divine Kathleen Battle continues to grace the stages of concert halls and opera houses in the great cities of world culture. Aytul continues her work as an outstanding journalist and author. And Leslie continues to thrive in heart and mind.
Thus I build my case as a blessed man, a man who has known, lived with, and loved these beautiful women. But I also realize that my inability to stay with a woman cannot be counted as character strength. I look, for example, at the character of my own father and his unmatched example as a family man of stability and remarkable integrity. The mature love between Mom and Dad set a standard I could never ever approximate, let alone achieve.
Only a few months ago, some fifteen years after Dad had passed, an extraordinary thing happened to me. After a lecture in Memphis, several hundred people lined up just to say hello. One of them, though, stopped me cold.
“You don’t know me, Brother West,” he said, “but I knew your mama Irene, your sisters Cheryl and Cynthia, your brother Cliff, and your daddy. I was in Shiloh with Reverend Cooke. I even knew your man Deacon Hinton. I knew ’em all.”
“Lord, have mercy!” I said. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Nate Walker. And I’ve stood in line not only to tell you that you gave a good word today, Brother West, but also to tell you something about your daddy you never knew. You see, I worked with the man at McClellan Air Force base. Yes sir, I worked beside Cliff West for many years. He was the leader of the black caucus on the base, where everyone knew that racism was intense. We just didn’t get promoted. Discrimination was rampant.
“Well, one day your father was asked by his superiors to write a report about which jobs could be eliminated among the black employees. Cliff took the assignment seriously. A week later, he read the report to both us and the white power establishment. There was only one recommendation: that Cliff’s own job be eliminated. We were shocked. Couldn’t believe it. Rather than doing us in, he offered himself up as a sacrificial lamb.
“In the end, though, the white folk wouldn’t fire him. You see, he was their bridge builder between us and them. They also knew that we’d go crazy if anything happened to big Cliff. So nothing did happen. He told us not to tell anyone, especially your mama. Miss Irene wouldn’t be happy knowing that her husband, with all them mouths to feed, had put his neck on the chopping block like that. But believe you me, when your daddy walked through that base, every last one of us bowed down to him.