Goodbye, Friend: Michael Eric Dyson on His Break With Mentor Cornel West
It was personal.
In Michael Eric Dyson’s takedown for The New Republic of his friend and mentor Cornel West, he has a come-to-Jesus moment that is neither pretty nor kind, but painfully blunt. The realization comes to Dyson that West is a parody of the intellectual he once was, that his vicious and often personal attacks on President Barack Obama have come at a cost—the loss of his credibility.
And the loss of their 35-year friendship.
Dyson’s story, “The Ghost of Cornel West,” is a tale of transgressions, verbal and personal, of bruised egos and hurt feelings, of a father figure lashing out at the perceived ease of youth and the successes of those for whom he laid a path.
It is a work of loss that is also an unmasking.
For Georgetown professor Dyson, West—once an emperor among his peers—no longer wears his scholarly clothes, but can still evoke the phrases and popularized passages that remind you of whom he once was.
Dyson writes of the Princeton scholar, “It is not only that West’s preoccupations with Obama’s perceived failures distracted him, though that is true; more accurate would be to say that the last several years revealed West’s paucity of serious and fresh intellectual work, a trend far longer in the making. West is still a Man of Ideas, but those ideas today are a vain and unimaginative repackaging of his earlier hits.”
Yes, Dyson affirms in his piece that West is brilliant. Yes, West is smart. Yes, West is one of the premiere intellectuals on the intersection of race and philosophy of his time. But yes, West is mortal, passive-aggressive, jealous and petty.
Dyson spoke with The Root Sunday about his piece and why he wrote it.
“Something irrational is going on,” Dyson said, later adding, “It was the nastiness of the tone. The unprincipled assault. There’s a difference between that and ad hominem.”
West’s ever personal turn has “obscured the sometimes powerful and sometimes luminous and other times legitimate critique” he may have, according to Dyson.
“But when you weight it down under the burden of extraordinary, personal bitterness, it just wipes away all the good stuff that you might say and makes us question what it is about the motivation for your criticism in the long run,” he said.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2015/04/michael_eric_dyson_tells_the_root_about_his_split_with_mentor_cornel_west.html?wpisrc=topstories
= new reply since forum marked as read
here's his article last April:
Michael Eric Dyson to Cornel West: You ain’t that important
...mirror. 
Dyson fails to mention the specific complaints Dr. West had with President Obama's policies - I suppose that was to just highlight the statements of frustration Dr. West has made. I won't defend those; Dr. West can defend himself on his rhetoric. What I will say is that there are countless students who had the benefit of West's teaching and mentoring who would disagree with Dyson. Interesting how he makes such an issue out of the fact that Dr. West hasn't written anything in a while, and his decision to speak out, more than write...Dyson makes his own living bloviating about one issue or the other as a 'motivational speaker.' Glass houses, and such... no matter.
While I may not agree with Dr. West's every word of criticism, I like, admire, and respect the man. This perennial attack on him by Dyson is pathetic and self-serving to whatever politics Dyson is trying to sell.
"West’s ever personal turn has “obscured the sometimes powerful and sometimes luminous and other times legitimate critique” he may have, according to Dyson."
...mirror.
I don't think Dr. West should be faulted for expecting more results from this president. Some of his more substantive remarks:
" . . . the President who chooses an economic team that has put Wall Street and banks at the center of their project and job creation as an afterthought — the homes of ordinary people as an afterthought."
" . . . they tilt toward a corporate agenda. If you tilt toward a corporate agenda, then black suffering and poor people and working people is not going to be central. Why? Because corporate America ain’t never dealt that much with poor people and working people, right? That he tilts toward another agenda that he doesn’t want to say — he just calls it the American agenda, which is a cop-out because the America agenda is a composite of a variety of different agendas, of people trying to learn how to live together and help an evolving democracy."
. . . an administration which regards and implements the view and initiatives of peacemakers with at least as much emphasis as he has given the warmakers.
" . . . he’s got a foreign policy team that he chooses, and he chooses to be a war President and escalating the war, not just in Afghanistan, but escalating those lethal drones in Pakistan."
Anyway, I'd stack Dr. West's history against Dyson's any day...
Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, academic, activist, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The son of a Baptist minister, West received his undergraduate education at Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1973, and received a Ph.D at Princeton University in 1980, becoming the first African American to graduate from Princeton with a Ph.D in philosophy. He was formerly The Class of 1943 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton before leaving the school in 2011 to become Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He previously taught at Harvard before leaving the school after a highly publicized dispute with then-president Lawrence Summers, and has also spent time teaching at the University of Paris.
The bulk of West's work focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical conditionedness." West draws intellectual contributions from multiple traditions, including Christianity, the black church, Marxism, neopragmatism, and transcendentalism. Among his most influential books are Race Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004).
As a young man, West marched in civil rights demonstrations and organized protests demanding black studies courses at his high school, where he was class president. He later wrote that, in his youth, he admired "the sincere black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party and the livid black theology of James Cone."
In 1970, after graduating from high school, he enrolled at Harvard College and took classes from philosophers Robert Nozick and Stanley Cavell. In 1973, he graduated magna cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization. West credited Harvard with exposing him to a broader range of ideas, influenced by his professors as well as the Black Panther Party. West says his Christianity prevented him from joining the BPP, instead choosing to work in local breakfast, prison, and church programs.
In 1980, West earned a Ph.D. from Princeton, where he was influenced by Richard Rorty's neopragmatism. The title of his dissertation was Ethics, historicism and the Marxist tradition, which was later revised and published under the title The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought.
In his mid-20s, he returned to Harvard as a W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow before becoming an Assistant Professor at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. In 1984, he went to Yale Divinity School in what eventually became a joint appointment in American Studies. While at Yale, he participated in campus protests for a clerical labor union and divestment from apartheid South Africa. One of the protests resulted in his being arrested and jailed. As punishment, the University administration canceled his leave for the spring term in 1987, leading him to commute from Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was teaching two classes, across the Atlantic Ocean to the University of Paris.
He then returned to Union for one year before going to Princeton to become a Professor of Religion and Director of the Program in African-American Studies from 1988 to 1994. After Princeton, he accepted an appointment as Professor of African-American Studies at Harvard University, with a joint appointment at the Harvard Divinity School. West taught one of the University's most popular courses, an introductory class on African-American Studies. In 1998, he was appointed the first Alphonse Fletcher University Professor. West utilized this new position to teach in not only African-American studies, but also Divinity, Religion, and Philosophy. West left Harvard after a widely publicized dispute with then-President Lawrence Summers in 2002. That year, West returned to Princeton, where he helped created “one of the world’s leading centers for African-American studies” according to Shirley Tilghman, Princeton's president in 2011. In 2012, West left Princeton and returned to the seminary where he began his teaching career, Union Theological Seminary. His departure from Princeton, unlike his departure from Harvard, was on good terms and he remains an emeritus professor at Princeton.
The recipient of more than 20 honorary degrees and an American Book Award, he has written or contributed to over twenty published books. West is a long-time member of the Democratic Socialists of America, for which he now serves as Honorary Chair. He is also a co-founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. West is on the Advisory Board of the International Bridges to Justice.
In 2008, he received a special recognition from the World Cultural Council. West is also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and its World Policy Council, a think tank whose purpose is to expand Alpha Phi Alpha's involvement in politics and social and current policy to encompass international concerns.
I had the pleasure and privilege of walking in a D.C. anti-war march where I ended up beside this man - he was walking alone, just months after treatment for his prostate cancer . . .We were stopped in front of the WH waiting for Cindy Sheehan and Jesse Jackson to push to the front of the line for a photo-op with the WH as a backdrop. We had a few words (I'd only be paraphrasing to recall them) about the large number of young folk in the sizable crowd. Cindy and Jesse pushed off and we continued in silence. It always feels like a funeral to me when I march. Very sad occasion. It was cool sharing that space with one of my icons, though.
on a lighter note:
On SNL, MLK ghost to Obama: . . . "I gotta go tell Cornel West to take it down about 30 notches!
