by Cornel West
Summers was taken aback. I guess he thought that bashing a faculty member—one that he was sure I loathed—would be a good way to kick off our talk. For my part, I was astounded that the president of Harvard would stoop to such tactics.
“Professor West,” he said, “let me get to the purpose of this meeting.”
“Please do.”
“While you were working for Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign, you cancelled your classes for three straight weeks.”
I could tell that Summers was getting warmed up, and rather than respond to the charges one by one, I decided to stay silent and let him present his case in full.
“I also don’t understand why in the world you would then go on to support another presidential candidate who didn’t have even a remote chance of winning,” he added. “No one respects him.”
Here he could have been referring to Ralph Nader or Al Sharpton, both whom I love and respect. I presumed Sharpton was the man he disapproved of so vehemently. In any event, I didn’t ask and allowed him to go on. His list of complaints and reprimands was long.
“Professor West,” he said accusingly, “I’m afraid there’s evidence that you’ve been contributing to grade inflation.
“Professor West,” he added, “you need to write an important book on a philosophical tradition to establish your authority and insure your place as a scholar.
“Professor West, you need to write works that are not reviewed, as your books have been reviewed, in periodicals like the New York Review of Books, but rather in academic journals.
“Professor West, you have to cease making rap albums that are an embarrassment to Harvard.”
I took a deep breath before replying. I began by saying, “Professor Summers, when you say ‘an embarrassment to Harvard,’ which Harvard are you talking about?”
“The Harvard I have been hired to lead,” he said.
“But your Harvard, Professor Summers, is not my Harvard. And I’m as much Harvard as you are. Look, we all know that Harvard has a white supremacist legacy, a male supremacist legacy, an anti-Semitic legacy, a homophobic legacy. And we also know that Harvard has a legacy that’s critical of those legacies. That’s the Harvard I relate to.”
“None of those Harvards have anything to do with rap albums,” said Summers.
“First of all, it wasn’t a rap album. It can loosely be described as hip-hop.”
“Still, an embarrassment,” repeated Summers.
“For me it’s an honor to be associated with hip-hop. Isn’t our mission to relate to the young, make them curious, challenge their minds, and excite their imaginations? My album contains many musical forms but is essentially tied to the struggle for freedom. I couldn’t be prouder of it.”
“I cannot tolerate teachers missing classes like you have,” he said, moving on to his next complaint.
“And I cannot tolerate the disrespect you show me by attacking me without a shred of evidence. The straight-up fact is that, in twenty-six years, I’ve missed one class—and that’s when I went to Africa to give a keynote lecture at a Harvard-sponsored AIDS conference in Morocco. And as far as your direction for me to write an important philosophical treatise, I did that some twelve years ago. My scholarship was deemed distinguished enough by Union, Yale, and Princeton to award me tenure. As far as your complaint about the New York Review of Books, a quick search will show that no book of mine has ever once received a major review in that magazine. Which brings me to a major question about my books, Professor Summers. Have you read any of them? Have you listened to my CDs?”
“That’s beside the point.”
“I’m afraid that is the point. You’re making unsubstantiated accusations against someone whom you know nothing about. If you really wanted to learn about my relationship with students, your research would show you that I’ve given no less than fifty lectures to student groups in my seven years here. I have a reputation for extending my office hours up to six hours to make sure every student is heard. Student meetings are absolutely vital to my mission as an educator.”
“Then you’ll appreciate what I’m about to say, Professor West. I want to have bi-monthly meetings with you.”
“For what purpose?”
“To review the grades you give your students and stay abreast of your publications.”
“Professor Summers, I am glad to meet with you whenever you like. You’re the president of Harvard and, as such, you’re surely entitled to meet a faculty member whenever you like. But if you think that I’m going to trot in here every two weeks to be monitored like a miscreant graduate student, I’m afraid, my brother, that you’ve messed with the wrong brother.”
With that, I got up and left.
FOR DAYS AFTERWARDS, I THOUGHT about the meeting. I was asked about it by friends, family, and faculty. I had a heart-to-heart with my closest friend, my blood brother Cliff.
“Sitting in there, listening to this man go off on me,” I told Cliff, “do you know what I was thinking about?”
“You were probably thinking about the way Dad’s bosses treated him. Dad was the most talented and popular man in his department, but every time he’d be up for a promotion, the managers would come down on him like he wasn’t worthy and needed to prove himself all over again.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking about, my brother. Dad went through some stuff. He put up with some arrogance that I can’t personally stomach.”
“It’s the way you’re being disrespected, Corn, that gets to me. Given how hard you’ve worked and all you’ve achieved, being dishonored is a serious sign that’s something really wrong with the way this new president is thinking.”
“And the way it came out of the blue. I don’t have to tell you, Cliff, that there’s no real precedent for this in my adult life. I’ve never been attacked by any college where I’ve taught. Never been insulted. Never been abused. And so when this motherhucker jumps up and starts telling me what I should start writing and how I should stop hip-hopping, man, I think he’s lost his cotton-pickin’ mind.”
“I feel you, Corn. What you going to do now?”
“I still got that other thing I need to focus on.”
“You got that right, Corn. I’m praying about that other thing. That other thing’s a lot more important than any messed-up Harvard president.”
The other thing Cliff was talking about was cancer. Cancer was trying to eat its way through my body.
WOMB TO TOMB
THERE ARE MANY FORMS OF CANCER. There’s the kind that gets you from the inside and the kind that gets you from the outside. When my inside cancer came on, the new millennium had started and the George W. Bush days were about to begin. The cancer I saw outside in the world was the one eating at the body politic. That cancer was fueled by greed, and indifference to the poor and disinherited. As it spread, it would corrode the nation’s spirit and weaken our economic immune system. It would darn near destroy that system. It was a fast-moving cancer, an aggressive cancer fueled by the toxins of unrestrained market-driven greed and a misguided foreign policy based on imperialistic notions of entitlement and superiority. At the end of this period, the cancer would leave the country wobbling, its culture in a state of deadly decay.
My internal cancer was unknown to me until I found myself at a bar mitzvah in New Jersey. I was accompanied by my dear sister Leslie Kotkin, with whom I had begun a long-term companionship. I originally met Leslie in her professional capacity as a skilled dental hygienist. I immediately saw her as a warm and generous Jewish sister of extraordinary sensitivity. I fell for her quickly, and within a short period of time we were a couple.
After the bar mitzvah, Leslie and I attended the reception when I ran into a friend. He started telling me about the alarming results of his recent PSA exam, the test used to check out the possibility of prostate cancer.
“What were your last PSA results?” he asked me.
“Man,” I said frankly, “I’ve never had that test.”
&
nbsp; “Well, Brother West,” he said, “you may be a scholar when it comes to books, but I’ll tell you this—you won’t get high marks for taking advantage of modern medicine. You need to have that test.”
Of course he was right. This was October 2001. Other things, though, were weighing heavily on my mind, namely legal procedures—the ongoing divorce lawsuit with Elleni and the child support demands being made by Aytul. The combination of both demands exceeded my resources. As I danced between courthouses, I let a couple of months go by before seeing a doctor.
When the PSA results came back, the doctor sat me down and said, “Professor West, this isn’t good. You’re off the chart. You’re in trouble. If you were white, you’d have an 80 percent chance of surviving. As a black man, your chances are 20 percent. It’s last-stage prostate cancer. This means the cancer is aggressive and spreading fast.”
Naturally I was shook. But I was also not completely terrified. After all, the death shudder had come over me as a kid and never entirely gone away. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been considering my own mortality for most of my life. Now, of course, it wasn’t an abstract notion. Death was staring me in the face. I was told I had only a two-out-of-ten chance to survive.
My first thought? Deep and overwhelming gratitude for being allowed to sit at the banquet of life for nearly fifty years, bombarded by the indescribable love of family and friends that sustained me on each step of my journey.
“Well,” I told Leslie, “if this thing gets me before they get it, I can’t complain. I’ve had an abundance of blessings. I have no regrets. At the same time, let’s see what the surgeons at this Boston hospital have to say.”
“I think we might want to go to New York and see the surgeons at Sloan-Kettering,” said Leslie, who was up on these things. “Sloan-Kettering is the best.”
With that statement, Leslie may have well saved my life. Leslie also mentioned my condition to Skip Gates, who was extremely helpful. “Corn,” said Skip, “you got to see Jerome Groopman. Jerome’s the man.” Groopman is famous for several books, including Second Opinions and The Anatomy of Hope. Brother Groopman, who worked out of Mass General in Boston, was quick to say, “Go see Peter Scardino. He’s head of surgery at Sloan-Kettering. He knows more about prostate surgery than anyone.”
So we ran down to New York and hooked up with Brother Scardino, a great guy. Scardino made a point I couldn’t ignore. He felt that his method gave me a better chance for ongoing sexual functionality. There was no arguing with that.
Just before the surgery the nurse took my blood pressure. It was 120/79. She was surprised it was so normal. Prior to a four-or five-hour surgery, one’s blood pressure usually elevates to high levels. She asked me how I felt.
I said, “I’ve reached an acceptance of my fate and especially an embrace of death, if God so wills it.”
On the operating table, I was thinking once more of all the unbelievable blessings that I’d been given throughout my life. I didn’t know whether I was going to die or not. I had to wait and see. But I refused to let death come in like a thief in the night and steal the joy and love I had already given and received. I was so grateful that God had allowed me to pursue my spiritual vocation of promoting unarmed truth and unconditional love.
Deep and mature spirituality is rooted in a wrestling with catastrophe. This is why Walter Benjamin is my secular soul-mate in twentieth-century philosophy. This is why the Garden of Gethsemane is so important. Even though God came into the world in human flesh to love, serve, and die, even God had to choose. Jesus said, “Let this cup pass from me.” He still had to choose to have His will conform to the will of God. For me, death could come, because I had made my choice. Our unimagined victories in the face of catastrophic conditions like life-threatening illness are majestic evidence of God’s love.
Armed with Groopman’s hopeful mindset and Scardino’s super surgical skills, they cut out the cancer and, some eight years later, I seem to have beaten the odds. Scardino was also right about the functionality. Thank you, Jesus.
The irony is that in my life, shot through with terrifying death shudders, I felt no terror in the face of the cancerous threat of death. In fact, I felt a profound sense of gratitude in having been alive, in being alive, and remaining alive after the surgery. And I have not felt a death shudder since that day.
Post-surgery was rough but made easier because Mom and Cliff flew in. Along with Leslie, they cared for me during recovery. Without those three incredible people—my mother, my brother, and my beautiful companion—I would not have made it. But make it I did. Dr. David Lodge continues to keep me healthy.
MEANWHILE, MY INTENTION WAS TO KEEP the whole Summers affair private. It was enough for the public to know that I was leaving Harvard for Princeton. I had deep connections to both schools. But the media got hold of the story and suddenly I was in the news. The media liked the story—they saw it as a heavyweight fight between a well-known African American prof and a brash new Harvard honcho. They gave it a black-versus-Jewish subtext, making the conflict even sexier. The Boston Globe ran a story followed by the New York Times, which put it on page one. The Times never bothered to interview me. Instead they talked about Summers’s equivocation on affirmative action. The subject of affirmative action, though, never even surfaced during my conversation with Summers. After the Times, things got crazier. I was getting calls from media the world over.
The attacks were vicious. Conservative columnist Brother George Will wrote that I got my post at Harvard only because of “racial entitlement.” Summers’s accusations were echoed by others. Without checking the facts, writers and TV pundits stated the charges as if they were facts—that I skipped classes all the time; that I refused to write new books; that the few books I had written were published eons ago and were mediocre at best; and that I was mau-mauing the Harvard president to boost my salary. One writer referred to me as the Eminem on the Charles, referring to the rapper and the river that runs by Cambridge. Enough was enough. How long do outrageous claims go unanswered? After months of silence, I decided to answer assertively. I appeared on Tavis Smiley’s show, as well as The O’Reilly Factor. I also granted the New York Times an interview. I told the simple truth about what had transpired in Summers’s office.
Meanwhile, large numbers of students and certain faculty members—especially Professors David Carrasco and Randy Matory—were vocal in their support of me. A search was made that showed I had more academic references in academic professional journals than all other black scholars in the country with the exception of my Harvard colleague, friend, and fellow University Professor William Wilson. It was pointed out that I had more academic references than fourteen of the other seventeen Harvard University Professors, and, ironically, I had twice as many as Summers himself. In the beginning, the press seemed interested in beating up on me, but when the facts were made clear and the truth came out, the media became more critical of Summers. Seeing that he may have messed up, Summers called me for another meeting.
I was back in his office. He began with sincere questions about my health. I told him that I appreciated his concern, and that I was hopeful all would be well. I was surprised and moved to learn that he had once fought cancer, survived, and showed distinctive courage in the battle. All was cordial.
“I want to thank you for not playing the race card during this entire unfortunate episode,” Summers said.
“In America,” I said, “the whole deck is full of race cards. In this instance, though, other issues were at stake.”
“I want to apologize to you, Professor West,” he added.
“I accept your apology, Professor Summers, but I do want you to know that your accusations against me somehow authorized an army of right-wing and even neo-liberal writers to vent a flood of pent-up hostility in my direction. They have tried to destroy me.”
“I want to apologize to you again, Professor West.”
“I appreciate that, and again, I accept your apology.”
That should have been that. But it wasn’t. The next day, the New York Times went front-page with a story about our meeting, indicating that Summers had not apologized and, in fact, hadn’t budged an inch from his original position. I immediately picked up the phone and called the president’s office.
“Professor Summers,” I said, “I’m sure you’ve seen the Times. Am I crazy, or did you or did you not apologize to me at least twice?”
“I did, Professor West,” he assured me. “The reporter just got it wrong.”
A little later, a contact of mine called and said, “Corn, I talked to the Times reporter. The reporter says that during the interview with Summers, Summers adamantly insisted that he never apologized to you—and never would. I’m afraid Summers is giving you the run-around.”
The press wanted to know my version and this time I didn’t hold back. I was ready with an analogy: “Larry Summers,” I said, “is the Ariel Sharon of American higher education. The man’s arrogant, he’s an ineffective leader, and when it comes to these sorts of delicate situations, he’s a bull in the China shop.”
That led to counter-accusations that I was being anti-Semitic. I had heard those charges when I backed Minister Farrakhan’s Million Man March and when I, along with my friend Rabbi Lerner, went to jail in opposition to Sharon’s oppressive Palestinian policies. In any event, I wrote off Summers as a man I could never trust. That was a sad conclusion, but sadder still was the big picture that was finally coming into focus.
After this controversy had raged on for months, I was amazed at how few faculty members and journalists were actually interested in getting to the truth. When rumors started flying, why didn’t the faculty members simply call me to ask what had really happened? Why didn’t the journalists covering the story come to the source rather than repeat the false innuendos? My conclusion was that the academy was more spineless than ever, and the press was more intoxicated with sensationalizing than substantiating. I was also amazed how few observers got the bigger point. This was, in essence, a debate about the place and purpose of the university in the American empire. Here I was, a professor who had been tenured at Yale, Princeton, and Harvard, a scholar with more publications than 95 percent of his colleagues. Suddenly this professor was being bullied by a university president. This professor was being told how to live his intellectual life. Don’t do hip-hop. Don’t write for mainstream journals. Restrict your audience to academics. Watch whom you campaign for. And submit to my scrutiny. Submit to my technocratic vision of higher education.
