by Jamal Eric Watson, November 18, 2011
The nation’s most visible Black intellectual, Dr. Cornel Ronald West is leaving his endowed professorship at Princeton University in July to become a professor of philosophy and Christian practices at Union Theological Seminary — an institution where he first began his teaching career as an assistant professor some 35 years ago.
It’s not West’s first departure from Princeton.
He was wooed away in 1994 by Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr., after directing its African American Studies department, but returned eight years later as the Class of 1943 University Professor following a public disagreement with then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers who questioned his scholarship and his commitment to undergraduate education.
West, 58, could not be reached for comment, but in an interview with Diverse, Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., chairman of Princeton’s Center for African American Studies, says that West’s decision to retire from Princeton signals a shift in how he views the next stage of his intellectual and activist work.
“Of course this is a devastating loss for us, but it’s a wonderful moment in his life,” says Glaude, who added that West will hold the status of professor emeritus, keeping the best-selling author and sought-after speaker on college campuses “forever connected to our university.”
Glaude first met West in 1991 while a graduate student at Temple University. The two struck up such a close friendship and mentoring relationship in the years that followed that Glaude invited West to be his son’s godfather.
