Summers Urging West To Stay

University President Lawrence H. Summers said yesterday he has been making strenuous efforts to keep Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 at Harvard.

The comments come on the same day that students delivered to West’s office a petition—signed by 1,200 Harvard students, Faculty and alums—urging West to stay at the University despite Summers’ “inexcusably” small efforts to keep him from leaving for Princeton.

In an interview yesterday, Summers said he has been seeking to mend his relationship with West.

“I hope Professor West stays and have been attempting in a variety of ways to reach out to him for some time to discuss any ways to make Harvard a more attractive place for him to remain,” Summers said.

“He’s a person who’s made substantial contributions both to the University and to scholarship,” he added.

Brandon A. Gayle ’03, president of the Black Students Association, said he will deliver a copy of the petition to Summers today.

The petition campaign lasted from Monday to Thursday of last week. Students tabled outside the Science Center and in House dining halls and Annenberg. Students at the Divinity School and the Law School also circulated the petition.

According to Gayle, roughly 1,000 of the signatures gathered are from students. Roughly 200 Faculty and alums also signed the petition asking West to stay in Cambridge.

West reportedly began considering a return to Princeton—where he taught before coming to Harvard—last fall following a conversation with Summers in which, West has said, Summers insulted him and his work. Summers has refused to comment on the exact content of that conversation.

West, who is on a medical leave of absence this semester, could not be reached for comment yesterday on his plans.

Additionally, West was not present to receive the petition yesterday, and his assistant could not say when he would be able to receive it, Gayle said.

The petition campaign was organized last week by the leaders of many student groups from across the University after several of the students learned that West might officially decide to leave for Princeton as early as this week.

The Princeton Board of Trustees, which must approve all appointments to the Princeton faculty, meets tomorrow.

The trustees do not meet again until June 3. If West does not decide by tomorrow to accept Princeton’s offer, he would have to wait until then to receive an official appointment.

Princeton spokesperson Marilyn Marks said yesterday that West’s name was not on a preliminary list of appointments to be discussed at the meeting as of the end of last week.

But she said if West makes his decision by tomorrow, his appointment could still be discussed at the meeting.

“I would imagine that if he does respond, we would make every effort to get him on [the agenda],” Marks said.

But students at Harvard are still hoping West will not head south.

“We undertook this massive project with hopes that it would tilt him...if he was still leaning in no particular direction,” Gayle said. “Hopefully our efforts will convince him that he is loved by students, and we definitely want him to stay.”

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.