BOSTON, Massachusetts-Educator and Civil Rights Activist Dr. Cornel West announced on Twitter in a scathing resignation letter to the dean of the Harvard Divinity School that he is leaving the prestigious school after being denied tenure, and called the university a "spiritual rot."
A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that brings a greater degree of job protection and can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program discontinuation.
"This is my candid letter of resignation to my Harvard Dean," West, 68, wrote in his letter. "I try to tell the unvarnished truth about the decadence in our market-driven universities! Let us bear witness against this spiritual rot!
He went on to say "how sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay,”
The 1974 Harvard University graduate and Bernie Sanders supporter spoke out on what he called “disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students” within the storied school’s ivy-covered walls."
An academician, social activist, public intellectual, author, and scholar who has taught and lectured at both Harvard and Princeton universities and has published or contributed to 20 books, West is best known for his oratory skills, his public speaking, and his influential books 'Race Matters' and 'Democracy Matters."
The well-known Black scholar has said that Harvard denied him a pathway to tenure and that his support of Palestinians in the Middle East has strained his relationship with university officials Rather than pursuing tenure at the Harvard Divinity School, where he has taught since 2017, West said he would return to his previous teaching job at the Columbia University-affiliated Union Theological Seminary.
Harvard declined comment.
West's resignation comes as Black scholars at university's across the country are under attack.
Earlier this year, the University of North Carolina offered a position without tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and professor, a decision it later reversed following backlash, though Hannah-Jones decided to leave anyway for Howard University,, a predominately Black institutions of higher learning out of Washington, D.C. and Vice President Kamala Harris' Alma mater.
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By Kathy Wray Coleman is a former public school biology teacher Black political and investigative reporter who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio
