After reading this interview, I’m starting to think that Larry Summers was wrong about Professor West. If UCLA could make some senior faculty hires, I would certainly support hiring both of them.
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After reading this interview, I’m starting to think that Larry Summers was wrong about Professor West. If UCLA could make some senior faculty hires, I would certainly support hiring both of them.
He may very well be cool-I can’t really speak to that. He may also be a nice guy for all I know. But, so far as I can tell, the guy is a charlatan. Problem is, what I’ve tried to read by him is so awful that it’s hard to get very far. I guess there’s a non-zero probability that his stuff just starts off really, really weak and gets better. That is a possibility.
The families of people who die in combat do not get personal POTUS calls, neither do Executive Office of the President employees who work 90 hours a week for 8 years for a POTUS. But West thinks he has sacrificed more than those lowly individuals and deserves special treatment because he did some campaign events. Says a lot about his character.
Hire him because he’s cool?
Are you still in high school, or what?
Professor West is very cool, and the fact that he inspires so many young people to think critically about race is the best argument in favor of him teaching at any college or university.
Matthew Kahn has a pretty impressive track record of wrongheaded posts on this blog. Witness for example his post earlier today apparently discerning merit in the meaningless High Broderism recently espoused by the consistently useless Tom Friedman. I can’t figure out whether this post is meant as humor, or is simply Kahn living down to his track record.
Cornel West also has a very deep voice. I bet he can do a passable imitation of the truly great Paul Robeson singing “Ol’ Man River.”
Race Matters is a very good book. I can’t speak to his more technical writing.
Matthew, I do believe you when you say you’d hire Summers at UCLA, if you could. Considering some of the people who work there now, I think that he’d fit right in.
http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2011&base_name=cornel_west_is_not_helping_him