http://www.democracynow.org/20…..on_his_new @ 43:00

AMY GOODMAN: The role of music in your life was part of perhaps why you ended up leaving Harvard, not as a student, but you were at Princeton, then you moved to Harvard to be with Skip Gates and a number of other professors in the African American Studies Department. You were also in Religion. Can you tell us what happened in your encounter—you write about it in your memoir—in your encounter with the president, Larry Summers, who plays a key role in the economic meltdown today?

CORNEL WEST: Oh, I know. No, indeed. But no, Brother Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people’s culture and working people’s culture and so forth. You know, he’s made remarks about putting pollution in Africa, because they suffer from overpopulation. Allegedly already deeply insensitive and so on.

When he arrived at Harvard, he met with every department other than Afro-American Studies. And so, Skip, my dear brother Skip Gates, knew something was wrong, so Skip Gates had already written a three-page single-spaced letter to Larry Summers when Larry Summers requested to meet with me, because he figured that Summers had something to say to me. And I said, “Why do you have to write that to the president?” I’d never met him before. But Neil Rudenstine, who was magnificent, who had been president, we had no problems with.

And as soon as I walked into the office, he starts using profanity about Harvey Mansfield. I said, “No, Harvey Mansfield is conservative, sometimes reactionary, but he’s my dear brother.” We had just had debates at Harvard. Twelve hundred people showed up. He was against affirmative action; I was for it. That was fine. Harvey Mansfield and I go off and have a drink after, because we have a respect, but deep, deep philosophical and ideological disagreement. He was using profanity, so I had to defend Harvey Mansfield.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, so you’re saying Lawrence Summers was using profanity?

CORNEL WEST: Larry Summers using profanity about, you know, “help me ‘F’ so and so up.” No, I don’t function like that. Maybe he thought that just as a black man, I like to use profanity. I’m not a puritan. I don’t use it myself. I have partners who do. But I don’t like people who feel comfortable using it without my permission and not knowing me, you see what I mean? And then from there, it went on and on. “Well, you supported Bill Bradley, didn’t attend classes.” Not true. “Well, you’re deeply into hip-hop, and it’s an embarrassment.”

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, saying that you supported Bill Bradley as president, for presidential candidate?

CORNEL WEST: Exactly, which I had.

AMY GOODMAN: Yeah.

CORNEL WEST: He was my dear brother. But I didn’t miss a class, and anybody knows that, flying back and forth, Iowa, New Hampshire and so on, and ended here in New York for my dear brother Bill Bradley. But talking about the hip-hop, “it’s an embarrassment.” I said, “Embarrassment to who?”

AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second.

CORNEL WEST: What kind of hip-hop?

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Summers talking about you and your hip-hop CD?

CORNEL WEST: Right, exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: That it’s an embarrassment.

CORNEL WEST: Exactly. “I don’t want you to have anything to do with the hip-hop.” Well, no, I’m a free black man. I do what I want to do. I could do ballet, I could do Baroque. I can work with Chuck D, I can work with Talib Kweli. I can work with KRS-One or Rah Digga. You see what I mean? But I had to tell him that.

He has a Harvard, I have a Harvard. I was as much Harvard as he was. Harvard has a vicious anti-Jewish tradition, vicious anti-black, vicious anti-woman, and homophobic, too. I said, but Harvard also has critiques of anti-Semitism, critiques of white supremacy.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, Larry Summers was in the midst of a anti-woman debate that had to do with women’s role in math and science.

CORNEL WEST: Well, that came a little after. You see, that came right after my encounter, you see. So he continually got in trouble and got in trouble. And I say this not to really just bash the brother. But that kind of arrogance and ignorance is dangerous in public places.

That’s why I was so surprised when Barack Obama chose him to be the national economic adviser. I said, here’s somebody who has no history whatsoever of sensitivity to poor people or working people, who had been supporting deregulation for a long time as a Clintonite, in the Clinton administration. What is going on here? Or has Obama already become so comfortable with the establishment that you had to have an economist who was legitimate to the establishment in order for him to get his regime off the ground? OK. I mean, if that’s the kind of argument you have, then put it forward. But don’t tell me you’re a progressive, then, and generate that kind of support or major advisers speaking to you—speaking to you every day. Now, if he had Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz or Sylvia Ann Hewitt, I’d say, “Hey, you got something going here. I think we’ve got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.”

But I do forgive Larry Summers for this reason: that I think we all ought to have joy in life, and you can only have joy when you overcome arrogance and open to your own ignorance, because you end up being smart and brainy, but suffering from spiritual malnutrition, emptiness of soul, you see.

AMY GOODMAN: But what happened after that meeting?

CORNEL WEST: What happened? I knew I had to go.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

CORNEL WEST: Because I don’t—I draw a line in the sand.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you have stayed if you wanted to?

CORNEL WEST: No way. I don’t believe in any kind of disrespect or dishonoring in that way. The latter part of the meeting, he said he wanted to monitor my work, meet with me every two months to make sure he knew what I was writing, what I was doing. I said, “You must be losing your cotton-picking mind.” Here I am a university professor, twenty-two university professors out of 2,000, already published fifteen books.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain, for people who don’t understand what a university professor is.

CORNEL WEST: Yeah, Harvard has 2,000 professors. The university professors, they choose twenty-two, and of those twenty-two—the twenty-two have no departmental connections whatsoever. They can teach as many courses or as few courses as they like. I could have chose to teach two courses; I taught four. I had a class of 700. They tried to cut it back to 300, saying they couldn’t find a room. So I left Harvard, and the Catholic Church allowed me to use the basement, so I could keep my 750 students, you see? So that’s what I was up against. But we’ve been up against much more difficult things than that.

So, thank God, Shirley Tilghman, my dear sister, visionary leader, president of Princeton, said, “Come back home to Princeton.” I said, “Thank you very much. I love New Jersey and New York.” And thank God I did go back to Princeton, because I’ve had a magnificent time at Princeton. As I mentioned before, I’ve had colleagues, you know, Eddie Glaude—of course, Brother Anthony Appiah had already left Princeton. You know what I mean? And then, being able to do the kinds of works that I do, and Sister Mary Ann and the others, who provide such a context for me to soar like an eagle, so it was really a blessing to return to Princeton in that regard.

But Harvard’s still a magnificent place, a lot of good people. They’ve got a good new president, a very fine new president in Drew Faust now. I was just with her last—

AMY GOODMAN: First woman president.

CORNEL WEST: —last year. Yes, absolutely.

What is the origin and meaning of the slang “veal pen” ? I gather it refers to tame liberal non-profits, are there other implications and nuances I need to understand?

What groups exactly are we talking about here? I want to know who to avoid helping. Can we name names? My knowlege of DC nonprofits is not large, is this Common Cause, the Sierra Club, or just who? ACORN? who’s in and who’s out of this pen?

Without this knowlege my ability to process the import of this article remains unfinished …

When Chris Hayes first wrote about AFR, he described them as a “small community of progressive finance reform advocates”

Has Chris changed his mind?

I have such a crush on Chris Hayes. Am I going to be disappointed? [Insert sad emoticon here.]

On second thought, don’t run Jane … they’ll “get” to you, too … they’ll start turning you into another moderate republican rite after the election.

You gotta be kidding me.