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Books by Cornel West
Democracy Matters: The Fight Against Imperialism /
Race
Matters /
Cornel West Reader /
The Future of the Race
The American Evasion of Philosophy /
African
American Religious Thought /
The War Against Parents
The African American Century /
White on White / Black on Black /
Prophesy Deliverance /
The Soul Knows No Bars
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West Cites Reason For Quitting
By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff
Cornel West, the well-known scholar of race and American culture,
decided to leave the Harvard University faculty last week because
president Lawrence H. Summers told him he wanted to personally
review West's scholarly work every few months to ensure it was up
to Harvard standards, West says in a Vanity Fair article to be
published in May.
The request by Summers, if
true, would be an extraordinary demand for a university president
to make of a professor, let alone the president of Harvard to a
university professor, the highest faculty rank, which West will
hold until July 1 when he becomes a senior professor of religion
at Princeton University.
In the Vanity Fair article,
Summers declined to comment on West's account of their exchange,
but is described as mystified by it. A Harvard official told the
magazine that "administrators don't monitor faculty members
at universities. They do try to stay in touch. There seems to be a
regrettable misunderstanding."
A Harvard spokesman yesterday
declined to comment on the article, and said Summers would have no
comment.
West's comments to Vanity
Fair represent his fullest description to date of his private
meeting with Summers in October. According to West, Summers began
the meeting accusing him of once missing three weeks of classes in
order to travel with former US Senator Bill Bradley's presidential
campaign. West said he replied, "That's not true, where'd you
hear that lie?" West said Summers cited "three
independent sources," but the professor again denied the
allegation.
The magazine cited a
"source close to Summers" as saying the president
"did reference rumors" about West missing classes, but
"expressed complete satisfaction with what West said and
deeply regrets the misunderstanding."
As one of 17 university
professors, West has considerable latitude for teaching and
research at Harvard and reports directly to Summers. He also said
in the article that the president suggested West undertake a
project to "reconstruct" a philosophical discipline.
According to West, Summers ended the meeting saying, "I look
forward to seeing you every two to three months to make sure
you're doing scholarly work that is in some way commensurate with
your position."
After the meeting, West said,
he told his department chairman, Henry Louis Gates Jr., that he
wanted to resign "on the spot."
Source: Boston Globe 14 April 2002 * * * *
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Brother West
Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir
By Cornel West
Brother West
is like its author: brilliant, unapologetic, full of passion
yet cool. This poignant memoir traces West’s transformation
from a schoolyard Robin Hood into a progressive cultural
icon. From his youthful investigation of the “death shudder”
to why he embraced his calling of teaching over preaching,
from his three marriages and his two precious children to
his near-fatal bout with prostate cancer, West illuminates
what it means to live as “an aspiring bluesman in a world of
ideas and a jazzman in the life of the mind.” Woven together
with the fibers of his lifelong commitment to the prophetic
Christian tradition that began in Sacramento’s Shiloh
Baptist Church,
Brother West
is a tale of a man courageous enough to be fully human,
living and loving out loud. |
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Michael Eric Dyson to President Obama /
Michael Eric Dyson: To The Young & Disillusioned
Michael Eric Dyson: Obama isn't Moses, he is Pharaoh
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Smiley and West: Obama & Sharpton
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Cornel West
to Take a Job in New York—Laurie Goodstein—16
November 2011—Cornel
West, the peripatetic public intellectual and
political activist, plans to finish out a teaching
career that has taken him from Yale to Harvard to
Princeton by moving back this coming summer to
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York,
where he began as an assistant professor in 1977.
Dr. West, the author of 19 books, including Race
Matters, and a ubiquitous television and radio
commentator, said he was taking a significant pay
cut to become a professor of philosophy and
Christian practices at Union.
The school,
where the eminent theologian Reinhold Niebuhr
taught, is also known as the birthplace of black
theology. James H. Cone, a foremost scholar in that
tradition, is still on the faculty.In an interview
from Seattle, on his way to visit Occupy protesters
there, Dr. West said that his liberal politics were
formed in Progressive Baptist churches, and that
Union was “the institutional expression of my core
identity as a prophetic Christian.”—NYTimes
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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