West Friend Cites Dispute in Departure

Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 decided to leave Harvard because of fundamental differences with University President Lawrence H. Summers about the purpose of education, one of West’s close friends and colleagues said Saturday night.

In an address entitled “God, Cornel West and Latinos at Harvard: Education for Liberation,” Rudenstine Professor of Latin American Studies David L. Carrasco downplayed the personality conflict between West and Summers that media accounts have emphasized.

Instead, he said, West left because of a split over more philosophical issues.

Carrasco said he thinks Summers believes the purpose of an education is “Veritas for its own sake—in other words truth as an end within itself.”

Referring to Summers’ inauguration speech, Carrasco contrasted the president’s view with what West calls “prophetic pragmatism”—a belief that the purpose of an education is to make a tangible difference in the world.

“West thinks of God as an agent…and one must be a part of that agency,” he said.

Carrasco delivered the keynote address to last weekend’s East Coast Chicano Student Forum conference, being held at Harvard. Close to 100 Latino students from Harvard, MIT, and Boston University attended the speech in Winthrop Dining Hall as part of a weekend-long conference sponsored by RAZA.

Carrasco began by joking about his friendship with West over the past decade. Only last year, Carrasco left Princeton for Harvard at his friend’s insistence. But now, as West has gone the opposite way, those at Harvard are left wondering why he left.

“It was me,” Carrasco quipped.

As he moved on to more serious points, Carrasco suggested a difference in ideologies between Summers and West was not the entire story behind their dispute.

In a meeting with West last October, Summers reportedly questioned West’s dedication to scholarship and took him to task for making a “rap” CD and working on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s political campaign.

“I know from several conversations with Cornel that he felt as if he had never been disrespected like this before in his life, and that is saying a lot given what this man has done,” Carrasco said.

He defended West’s academic work and said the CD was simply an attempt to reach out to more students.

“If anyone in Mass. Hall had even listened to the CD, they would have realized that it was not ‘rap,’” Carrasco said.

According to Carrasco, West agonized over his decision until quite recently and it pained him to leave.

“Princeton is a fabulous school, but it is not Harvard,” he said.

Carrasco said that until recently West was looking for reasons not to leave Harvard.

Last week students presented a petition to West’s office signed by 1,200 signatures urging him to stay. Summers has also said that he sent several letters to West over the past months trying to make Harvard a more attractive place for him.

But Carrasco says these efforts were not enough.

“Three weeks ago he didn’t want to leave, but Princeton was calling him every week and frankly Harvard was not,” he said.

Carrasco said he understands that many students are disappointed in West’s decision and that he is “leaving in an atmosphere of desperation and what might appear as disrespect for African American and Latino students.”

But the Latino students at the speech said they did not feel disillusioned with West but were grateful Carrasco had arrived at Harvard.

“In the same way that Cornel West was a prophetic voice for African American students, David Carrasco is a voice for Latino students,” said Luis S. Hernandez, a Divinity School student who co-chairs Concilio Latino. “We must look on him to expand upon Brother Cornel’s leadership.”

West and Carrasco have repeatedly engaged in public debates over Latino and Afro-American issues, including one four years ago in Sanders Theatre.

Carrasco said he is confident their friendship and collaboration will continue but said he still feels a great loss.

“Today is a sad day and I am mourning,” said Carrasco, who said he himself had recently turned down an offer from another university. “What is really at stake here is the aim of a Harvard education...Harvard is as much about hierarchy as education.”

Carrasco addressed the East Coast Chicano Students Forum as part of a weekend conference entitled “Nuestro Futuro” during which students met for a series of social, administrative and community service events.

The conferences are held four times and year and it was decided on Saturday that the next one would be held at Princeton.

—Staff writer Jessica E. Vascellaro can be reached vascell@fas.harvard.edu.