Professor and activist Cornel West has resigned from Harvard University via a letter posted to Twitter following his revelation that the school denied him a tenure review in February.
In the letter, the African American studies professor and civil rights activist accused the school of “spiritual rot” and writes that he joined Harvard four years ago with the idea that he can “still end his career with some semblance of intellectual intensity and personal respect.”
“This is my candid letter of resignation to my Harvard Dean. I try to tell the unvarnished truth about the decadence in our market-driven universities! Let us bear witness against this spiritual rot!” West wrote in the tweet accompanying the release of his resignation letter.
“How sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay,” he wrote. “The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large.”
The 84-year-old added that despite a “few glorious and glaring exceptions,” the shadow of “Jim Crow was cast in its new glittering form expressed in the language of superficial diversity.”
West was previously tenured at Harvard before he quit in 2002, and explained that since he came back, he earned the “lowest increase possible” to his salary each year. He wrote that the school ultimately rejected him for another review over his support of Palestine.
“… To witness a faculty enthusiastically support a candidate for tenure then timidly defer to a rejection based on the Harvard administration’s hostility to the Palestinian cause was disgusting,” West wrote. “We all know the mendacious reasons given had nothing to do with academic standards.”
The letter also went into detail on some more personal matters, as West said only two colleagues reached out to him about his mother’s death, despite it being revealed in a newsletter to them.
“This kind of narcissistic academic professionalism, cowardly deference to the anti-Palestinian prejudices of the Harvard administration, and indifference to my Mother’s death constitutes an intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep deaths,” West wrote.
West previously revealed in March that he’s rejoining the Union Theological Seminary in New York City—“a place with brilliant faculty and moral tenacity.” Harvard declined to comment on the New York Post’s story Tuesday about West’s resignation letter.
