Antisemitism Continues its March Toward Acceptability on the American Far Left

Antisemitism Continues its March Toward Acceptability on the American Far Left

At least as long the perpetrators can pretend it's really about Israel, as examples from Cornel West and the ACLU suggest.

DAVID BERNSTEIN | 2.21.2021 6:15 PM

Cornel West, a celebrity academic, asked Harvard, where he had once been tenured before decamping to Princeton, to offer him a tenured position. Harvard declined, and instead offered the 67-year-old West a ten-year contract.

This may be an example of (rational but illegal) age discrimination, as Harvard may not want to tenure someone whose most productive years may be behind him. It may be a product of West having left Harvard last time under less-than-pleasant circumstances following a dispute with then-President Lawrence Summers. And it may be the result of the fact that West hasn't published academic scholarship in years, so tenuring him would make a sham of the process and lead to litigation when Harvard denies other people tenure for not meeting appropriate standards for scholarship. (It's one thing to keep a celebrity academic who no longer publishes academic scholarship in their field like Alan Dershowitz or Noam Chomsky on payroll; it's quite another to tenure them from the outside.)