His subject is nothing

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views May 6, 2002]

Here’s yet another must read on the Cornel West/Harvard saga. From an editorial entitled "The Pragmatist," in the April 29 edition of The New Republic:

Cornel West, one of the most persistent popularizers of the term "public intellectual," fled his post at Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Princeton. The reason: comments made by Harvard President Lawrence Summers several months ago that West said "disrespected" him.

West's snit was remarkable not merely for making the front page of The New York Times; it was remarkable because the Summers slight was, well, slight. After initially suggesting that West produce some heavy-duty scholarship befitting his title of University Professor--Harvard only anoints 16 members of the faculty with this top honorific--Summers tried furiously to paper over his differences with West. He called the flap a "terrible misunderstanding." . . .

But the problem isn't just the form of West's academic output; it's the content. West describes his intellectual project in a manner both self-deprecating and grandiose: "My work is a feeble attempt to understand and respond to the guttural cry that erupts from the depths of the soul of each of us. The existential quest for meaning and the political struggle for freedom sit at the center of my thought." So, in short, his subject is everything. Therefore it is also nothing.

Over the past decade his writings have caromed from the politics of parenting to the future of progressivism to black-Jewish relations--all far afield of his onetime academic specialties in Christian thought and post-analytic philosophy. And as a result, West floods the library with vague assertions--damning the American "homespun brand of authoritarian democracy" or asserting that "Marxist thought becomes even more relevant after the collapse of communism"--but rarely bothers to present evidence or construct arguments that might support them.

( See also Issues & Views reports of January 14, February 11, and April 22.)

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