PRINCETON, N.J. – Celebrities like Lupe Fiasco, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Harry Belafonte, joined with high-profile academicians Wednesday to pay tribute to Dr. Cornel West, who announced his retirement from Princeton University.
West, who is the author of the best-seller Race Matters and the recently-released book The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto with commentator Tavis Smiley, announced last year that he was returning to Union Theological Seminary, the place where he launched his teaching career in 1977.
“We are here to celebrate the work, legacy and spirit of one of Princeton’s most cherished sons, Dr. Cornel West,” said Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, chairman of Princeton’s Center for African American Studies at the farewell celebration held on campus. “Princeton is a far, far better place because he’s been with us over the past 40 years.”
The three-hour program, titled “A Bluesman in the Life of the Mind,” drew hundreds of students and locals who showed up at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton to praise West’s scholarship as a philosopher and public intellectual.
Princeton’s President Shirley Tilghman, who described West as an “author, actor and rapper,” said that she was thrilled when the university was able to lure him back to Princeton in 2002 “after a period of self-inflicted exile in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
West earned his Ph.D. from the university and taught there from 1988 to 1994 before leaving for Harvard. He returned in 2002 after a public spat with Harvard’s then president, Lawrence Summers.
Now, he is a sought-after speaker and activist, barnstorming the country to speak out about racial and economic injustice.
