Posted on 12/29/2001 12:18:21 AM PST by Pokey78
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 28 — The academic stars of Harvard's Afro-American Studies department are considering leaving for rival Princeton, in an open challenge to the new president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers.
Princeton is seeking to lure the professors, including Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West, in hopes of building an instant department that might rival Harvard's in its popular and scholarly appeal, officials at both universities said. Speaking mostly through surrogates, the professors say they have been willing to consider leaving because Mr. Summers, a treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, has yet to speak out forcefully enough in favor of affirmative action and diversity.
But people close to the professors and to Mr. Summers say the critical moment was a private meeting between Dr. West and Mr. Summers in October.
At that meeting, first described over the weekend in The Boston Globe, the Harvard president suggested that Dr. West embark on a new work of serious scholarship befitting his elite designation by Harvard as one of only 14 University Professors. In recent years, Dr. West, a noted author, has recorded a rap CD and been an adviser on Bill Bradley's presidential campaign.
Mr. Summers also encouraged Dr. West, whose classes draw hundreds of students, to become a leader in tamping down grade inflation at Harvard, where one of every two grades awarded in recent years has been an A or A-. Mr. Summers has had similar conversation with other professors, his aides said.
In what an aide to Mr. Summers characterized as a "terrible misunderstanding," Dr. West walked away insulted, and inclined to consider a formal offer that had been made more than a year ago by Princeton, where Dr. West taught before being lured by Dr. Gates to Harvard in 1994.
In an interview here today at his official residence, Mr. Summers declined to provide any details of his meeting with Dr. West, but challenged the contention that he had not publicly declared his energetic support for a diverse Harvard community since being named the institution's 27th president in March.
Mr. Summers referred to his inaugural address, delivered on Oct. 12, in which he said: "A century ago this was an institution where New England gentlemen taught other New England gentlemen. Today, Harvard is open to men and women of all faiths, all races, all classes, all states, all nations. As a result, we offer a better education to better students who make us a better university."
But Charles J. Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School who is representing Dr. West in his dealings with the university, said Mr. Summers had not gone far enough.
"It's absolutely critical that the president make an unequivocal public statement in support of affirmative action," Mr. Ogletree said. "That would be encouraging for those scholars who came to Harvard and were recruited because this was going to be the premier institution of black intellectual inquiry."
In the interview, Mr. Summers said he had met privately with Dr. West just after the professor had returned from a one-year leave that he had taken for personal reasons. In recent days, Dr. West, 48, has requested and received another leave, effective immediately, to prepare for and recuperate from treatment for prostate cancer, officials said.
Dr. West's standing offer to return to Princeton was extended again as recently as Oct. 14, when Shirley M. Tilghman, the new president of Princeton, spoke briefly with him at the inauguration of Ruth J. Simmons as president of Brown University.
In addition to pursuing Dr. West, Princeton is seeking to hire others in the 16-member Harvard department, including Dr. Gates, who is its chairman and a specialist in African- American literary criticism and history, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher.
Neil Rudenstine, Mr. Summers's predecessor, had laid the groundwork for creating the powerhouse department by hiring Dr. Gates away from Duke University in 1991. Among others Dr. Gates later hired or helped to hire were Dr. West; Dr. Appiah; the sociologist William Julius Wilson; and the legal scholar Lani Guinier.
Dr. Gates did not respond to telephone messages left for him today at home and at his office, as well as via e-mail, but a person close to both him and Dr. West said Dr. Gates would be unlikely to remain at Harvard if Dr. West departed. Dr. Gates, who has been contacted by Princeton representatives, a person familiar with the recruitment effort said, would consider following his colleague there. Efforts to reach Dr. Appiah today through his office, which was closed, were not successful.
Marilyn Marks, a spokeswoman for President Tilghman of Princeton, said that the effort to lure scholars of the caliber of Dr. West and his colleagues was part of a wider effort by the university, which is weighing whether to expand its African-American studies program into a full department that would award bachelor's degrees, as Harvard's does.
"Obviously, these are very well- known scholars who are very distinguished in their discipline," Ms. Marks said. "Anyone would want them."
That a university, like a professional sports team, would seek to raid the locker room of a competitor is hardly unusual. Nor is it unusual for professors who are being pursued by a rival institution to seek to use that interest as leverage with their current employer.
Still, Mr. Summers of Harvard said he was taking the challenge seriously and would rise to it.
"We are proud of the Afro-American Studies program at Harvard, collectively and individually," Mr. Summers said. "We would very much like to see them stay at Harvard and will compete vigorously to make this an attractive environment."
...Dr. West walked away insulted...
God forbid that a Harvard professor should be compelled to engage in serious scholarship.
Yale of course, has neatly trumped both Princeton and that other place by offering a course that honors Women, Africans, and Poets, whilst allowing the undergraduate to accrue a foreign language credit.
The course, entitled "Women Francophone Poets of West Africa," (there are three, you know). One of my many offspring took it shortly before he was disowned. Got an 'A.'
Well there is a series of words that should never be grouped together in that way.
To hell with "black studies", "gay studies", "women's studies", etc...back to basics to restore Harvard's greatness.
Wow! Talk about "impossible dreams"! You will NEVER see that happen- and we all know why.
Not for hair dresser and barbers.
Elaborate on these points, please.
Here's an elaboration for you on this attempted coup by the Gramscian-marxist ivory tower intellectual sorts.
It was Gramsci's thought that all were "intellectuals" ...
He felt that, with the proper training or influence by the ivory tower intellectuals, "organic intellectuals" could be molded who would raise the consciousness of the average intellectual ... the "masses".
Naturally, as an anti-fascist with marxist/Bolshevik sympathies in Mussolini's Italy, his bent was labor. But he was not satisified merely with organizing strikes and such. He felt it imperative that the laborer learn everything possible about labor and industry so as to be a better "laborer".
In practice, what this meant was that the organic intellectuals would educate the masses of laborers to their ivory tower ideas about labor. Sufficiently conditioned, the masses would make better laborers. This had little to do with actually making their lives better or happier but MUCH to do with training them to respond to the right buzzwords.
It is a distinctly Gramscian-marxist bent in academia which insists that women must study women, blacks much study blacks, homosexuals must study homosexuals under the guise of "pride" or "knowledge". In fact, it's objective is to make them define themselves first and foremost as their CLASS of being -- within whatever sexual, racial or sexually oriented group they shall define themselves first and foremost.
This way, they are better conditioned to respond -- like Pavlovian dogs -- to the buzzwords, agendas and skew realities to which they've been conditioned. They become like puppets who respond as taught when their chains are yanked.
Thoroughly immersed in their atomistic take on Self and others, they are absolutely content -- and even DEMAND -- to be defined by their skin, sex organs or private sexual proclivities.
As is the case here.
It's brilliant, actually. A perfect means to destroy from within that thought that "all men are created equal" while expressly pretending that women are no different from men, homosexuality is no different from heterosexuality or that all cultures and racial differences are somehow "equally" meaningless.
Bottom line ... I'll bet Alan Keyes (disgusted as he may be with Harvard) would consider it an improvement were these "black studies" professors to move to Princeton where they and their Black Pride might provide some cover to the eugenist Peter Singer whose ideology is founded in exactly the mindset which has plied blacks with all the birth control and abortion and broken marriages they need to OFF THEMSELVES as is their right ... and duty.
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