Cornel West-Pamphleteer, Activist, and Not Much Else

                                                                     Cornel West (left) showing his "wisdom" against Leo Terrell

Several months ago, I happened to catch Cornel West's act on Fox News where he got into an angry shouting match with Los Angeles civil rights attorney Leo Terrell. I mean it was ugly (but entertaining). Terrell, who knows how to shout with the best of them, has recently seen the light and transitioned into something of a conservative. He tore West apart with pointed daggers while West was barely comprehensible in his rage.

I also recall the time UC Irvine invited West to speak in 2011. I was teaching part-time there at the time but didn't attend. I was not interested in hearing West's garbage, and to tell the truth, I may not have even been aware of it until it had passed. I read about it in the campus newspaper, New University, and what stood out to me in the article was how much the school administrators, who invited this boob, and the New University gushed over him.

"West captivated the crowd all night with his wisdom."

You get the picture.

Well, now the learned professor is embroiled in another controversy. He is attacking Harvard because they don't feel that he is worthy of tenure. His publishing history, upon close inspection, doesn't measure up. Much of his work is in the form of pamphlets, as Harvard has pointed out. Yet, West blames his lack of tenure on-you guessed it- Israel and Zionists. Hugh Fitzgerald, writing in Jihad Watch, points out the fallacies of West's arguments.

 https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/03/cornel-west-blames-zionists-for-his-failure-to-be-given-tenure-at-harvard

In the interest of full disclosure, though I taught English as a second language part-time at UC Irvine Extension from 1998-2016, I possess only a humble master's degree (which I got at age 48). My publications consist of three historical books and a handful of articles. However, I have never had any pretensions of having tenure or even a full-time university teaching job for that matter. Teaching ESL was my post-retirement job and was always part-time. I never even needed or wanted a full-time position.

So you wise guys can save your cards and letters.

More important to point out, however, is that for West to blame his lack of tenure on Israel and Zionists doesn't hold water because, in fact, our universities are overflowing with tenured professors who are just as vehemently anti-Israel as West. They come a dime-a-dozen in academia, and West is just another loudmouth.