My expanded observations on Cornel West's situation at Harvard are in a new column on Real Clear Education. Here is the gist:
Cornel West is Blaming His Problems on Israel — Again
In 2016, West accepted a non-tenure-eligible position in Harvard’s divinity school and African-American Studies department. Following the standard five-year review, Harvard offered West a ten-year contract renewal as the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, as well as a significant pay raise. But West wanted more, demanding that he be switched to a tenured position. Harvard declined. West, having previously been tenured at Yale, Princeton, the Union Theological Seminary, and in an earlier appointment at Harvard, considered the denial disrespectful and loudly complained. The refusal was inconceivable, he said, unless something sinister was afoot. And he knew just whom to blame.
West has convinced himself that his many other radical positions are fully acceptable to Harvard, including his outright rejection of capitalism, which ought to be most troubling to the university’s wealthy donors. He is likewise certain that his “joyful support” of Bernie Sanders would never be held against him. But with nothing even resembling evidence, West has no doubt that shadowy friends of Israel just had to be responsible for his rebuff by the Harvard administration. That might make sense only to someone intensely committed to West’s worldview; his conclusion would otherwise be recognized as an unsupported non-sequitur.
You can read the entire piece here.