Afro
American scholars may desert Harvard
Jacques Steinberg,
New York Times
Saturday, December 29, 2001
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle
www.sfgate.com
Cambridge, Mass. -- The academic stars of Harvard's Afro American Studies department are considering leaving for rival Princeton, in a challenge to the new president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers. Princeton is seeking to lure the professors, including Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West, in hopes of building an instant department that might rival Harvard's in its popular and scholarly appeal, according to officials at both universities.
The professors say they have been willing to consider leaving because Summers, a Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, has yet to speak out forcefully enough in favor of affirmative action and diversity. But people close to the professors and to Summers say the critical moment was a private meeting between West and Summers in October.
At that meeting, first described in the Boston Globe, the Harvard president suggested that West embark on a new work of serious scholarship befitting his elite designation by Harvard as one of only 14 university professors. In recent years, West, a noted author, has recorded a rap CD and has served as an adviser on the presidential campaigns of Bill Bradley and Al Sharpton. Summers also encouraged West to become a leader in tamping down grade inflation at Harvard, where one of every two grades awarded in recent years has been an A or A minus.
Though an aide to Summers said there had been a "terrible misunderstanding, " West, 48, walked away insulted and inclined to consider a formal offer that had been made more than a year ago by Princeton, where West had taught before being lured by Gates to Harvard in 1994. Summers declined yesterday to provide any details of his meeting with West, but challenged the contention that he had not publicly declared his support for a diverse Harvard community since being named the institution's 27th president in March.
Summers referred to his inaugural address, delivered on Oct. 12, in which he said: "A century ago this was an institution where New England gentlemen taught other New England gentlemen. Today, Harvard is open to men and women of all faiths, all races, all classes, all states, all nations." West's standing offer to return to Princeton was extended again as recently as Oct. 14, when Shirley Tilghman, the new president of Princeton, spoke briefly with him at the inauguration of Ruth Simmons as president of Brown University.
In addition to pursuing West, Princeton is seeking to hire others in the 16- member Harvard department, including Gates, who is its chairman and a specialist in African American literary criticism and history, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher. Marilyn Marks, a spokeswoman for Tilghman of Princeton, said the attempt to lure scholars of the caliber of West and his colleagues was part of a wider effort by the university, which is weighing whether to expand its African American studies program into a full department that would award bachelor's degrees, as Harvard's does.
"Obviously these are very well-known scholars who are very distinguished in their discipline," she said. "Anyone would want them."
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