West is great and all, but that article is a joke. The destruction of a cultural institution like the Voice by its new owners is at least as bad as forcing a talented, wealthy academic to move from Ivy to another.
 

I'm still with Larry on this one. "a danceable education"? Who talks like that! The man is self-consciously goofy, people need to call him out on this.
 

Hmmm...now, don't you think that one could take any number of phrases thrown around in, say, comp lit, and they might sound similarly "goofy"?
 

What does an official Harvard apology consist of, Rich? A release from Drew Faust, saying sorry my predecessor bullied you and you felt you had to go? In the W&M; post above you present yourself as someone sophisticated about public relations. How does a university "apologize" for demeaning a former faculty member, even if it should want to?
 

predecessor but one, that is.
 

Richard: agreed that one could do that with phrases from Comp Lit. But why isn't that an indictment of both West and Comp Lit?
 

Excellent point....both West and Comp Lit are self-consciously goofy. Harvard should issue a simple "I'm sorry" for both of them. But, of course, a moneyed gift is always nice. Means more.

eayny
 

Agreed with the poster who says that a formal apology is unlikely and in any case awkward.

But how about an invitation to West to return to give a lecture, or make some such similar appearance?

Apologies can sometimes be implicit *and* meaningful if the intention is clear.

I think that the difficulty of doing this in a graceful way should not outweigh the benefits of having done it; if Harvard doesn't address this in some way, then it really is a stain on the university about which no one can feel good. Debate the merits of West's scholarship as you will (but be sure to apply that debate equally to all University Professors), the discussion of West's music-making acquired racist undertones—and that was truly unfortunate.
 

Plato talks about education in dance and song dance and song, not distinguishable in certain contexts in ancient Greece (Laws 7.814ff). And for him it was a matter of ethics and morality. He talks of the need to educate the young in honorable movements and songs and to avoid the opposite (Dionysiac, etc.). It seems to me, again, that West is articulating a desire to direct a genre of contemporary dance/song in a way that is morally improving. It's what Christian Rock, a genre I don't care for myself, also did, with some success, I gather. West presumably knows he doesn't have the artistic ability to pull it off, so he enlists those he hopes will. It may not work, or it may not work where such education is most needed for the education and improvement of our citizenry, but the notion is not inherently foolish, and there is good precedent.
 

If "Issues of respect and mutual civility are very important issues" to Cornel West, then I find it intriguing how he's consistently directed barbs (primarily implicit) towards Lawrence Summers in both his public and private engagements since leaving Harvard.

There might not be a statue of limitations on how long "Brother West" may continue to give Summers his due, but so many years later it's growing increasingly tiresome to watch the dead horse get beaten once more.

Nobody's asking West to apologize.
 

I'm all for the concept, but the lyrics I just read in that article were incredibly lame, and I'm not talking politically here, I'm talking does it sound cool? To me, it sounds the opposite of cool. I mean, it's better than Karl Rove's rapping at the WH press dinner, but not by as much as it should have been.