Dear President Lawrence Bacow, Provost Alan Garber, and Dean Claudine Gay,

We are writing as a coalition of students, alumni, faculty, and community members to condemn Harvard’s decision to deny Professor Cornel West’s consideration for tenure and demand that the University reopen pathways for Professor West’s tenure and further commit to advancing racial justice in substantive ways.

On Feb. 18, the Boston Globe revealed that Professor West — a prominent philosopher, social critic, author, intellectual, and Harvard University professor — had been denied tenure consideration. The denial comes after Professor West received a positive five-year review since rejoining Harvard University faculty as the Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy in 2017. He is best known throughout Harvard College for his course, "Intro to African-American Studies," and he has shown unquestionable devotion to his scholarship, pedagogy, and students inside and outside of that course. Professor West's intellectual and scholarly contributions to Harvard are undoubtedly "of the first order of eminence," as per the tenure process requirements in the FAS handbook.

Harvard has a history of treating its radical and justice-oriented scholars as dispensable. Primarily, Black studies, Indigenous studies, and ethnic studies scholars have been recruited, then discarded as untenured faculty in one-year postdoctoral fellowships, contingent professorships, or three-year lecturer positions. Ultimately, Harvard’s denial of tenure process to Professor West is a testament to Harvard's continued expulsion of faculty who offer incisive analysis of white supremacy, racial capitalism, Zionism, and the military-industrial complex, all of which Professor West fervently critiques.

Instead of investing in critical scholarship and pedagogy, Harvard has quelled dissent from students and faculty criticizing the University’s latent and active practices of racism, defended a racist and problematic tenure process, and continually failed to provide secure and valued employment for Black and Brown faculty. We particularly emphasize the problematic tenure process and the opaque ad-hoc committee, which give significant and undue power to President Bacow and Provost Garber to determine who deserves tenure.

Beyond Professor West, Professor Lorgia García-Peña, a scholar of Latinx Studies, was the fourth tenure-track Ethnic Studies scholar discarded by Harvard since 2016 (the others are Professors Ahmed Ragab, Natasha Warikoo, and Genevieve Clutario). This unfortunate pattern denied two scholars of immense value and brilliance security because their scholarship is, as Professor West told the Globe, “too controversial,” “too fraught” — or, perhaps, too honest. Professor West stood in solidarity with Professor García-Peña, as he always has with victims of white supremacy.  However, even solidarity from someone as powerful as West wasn’t enough — Harvard had a choice, and, like usual, Harvard’s entrenched, structural racism won out.

Likewise, Professor West has been vocal about his opposition to the settler colonial violence of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, which he believes was a decisive factor in Harvard’s refusal . With the rise of campus activism for Justice in Palestine, West stood with student organizers in their calls for Harvard to divest from companies implicated in human rights violations against Palestinians. Harvard must urgently commit to ensuring academic freedom of expression for those in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, including Professor Cornel West.

Following the heightened protests against police brutality over this past year, Harvard announced its commitment to the “relentless pursuit of justice, fairness, and opportunity for all,” in the spirit of the late great Civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis. Months later, this same administration refused to take action against a professor known to have authored racist blog posts.

It is difficult to believe that Harvard truly seeks to uphold its “commitment to diversity” when in 2021, only 13% of Harvard’s tenure-track faculty were underrepresented minorities, a mere 4% increase from 2017. How can this university possibly claim to champion “racial justice” while denying the foremost scholar of race in America occupational security and institutional support? This is especially damaging to Harvard’s Black students, who are already in need of Black professors and role models in academia, especially in light of Harvard losing Professors Elizabeth Hinton and Lorgia Garcia-Peña.

Harvard University is not committed to racial justice in any meaningful sense. Harvard’s disrespect for Professor West is a reflection of the University’s deeper-rooted investment in systemic racism. We point to Harvard’s stated commitment to racial justice and demand accountability and transformation.

We demand Harvard take the following steps to correct its actions:

1. Provide Professor Cornel West with the opportunity to pursue tenure through a fair assessment of his merit as a scholar — without intervention by the ad-hoc committee, an esoteric and unaccountable body whose involvement has only corrupted an otherwise transparent academic review process;

2. Abolish the ad-hoc committee in the tenure process;

3. Recruit and retain more tenured and tenure-track Black scholars and appropriate scholars of Black, Ethnic, and Indigenous studies;

4. And publicly and financially commit to creating an Ethnic Studies department, including an undergraduate concentration, graduate studies department and research center.

These are only the preliminary steps that Harvard must take in order to rectify its centuries-long history of racism and move toward restoring its relationship with Black and Brown students and scholars.

Undersigned by the following organizations,

Act on a Dream
Afro-Brazilian Alliance
Applied Physics Graduate Student Council
Asian Americans for Political Justice
Association of Black Harvard Women
Black Community Leaders
Black Coalition for Rights
Black Pre-Law Association
Black Students Association
Branson Law Office, P.A.
BSU at HKS
Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice
Colombian Student Association at Harvard College
Communidad Latinx
Deaf Awareness Club
Equity in Policy Education
FIG. Magazine
First-Generation Harvard Alumni
First-Year Experience Office
Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard
Fuerza Latina
Generational African American Students Association
Greener Scott Scholars
Harvard African Student Association
Harvard Alliance Against Campus Cops
Harvard Athletics Black Varsity Association
Harvard Black Men’s Forum
Harvard Business School Black Investment Club
Harvard Caribbean Club
Harvard College Queer Students and Allies
Harvard College Reproductive Justice Action & Dialogue Center
Harvard College Turkish Students Association
Harvard College Writing and Public Service Initiative
Harvard College Young Democratic Socialists
Harvard Dance Center
Harvard Ethnic Studies Coalition
Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU) Local 5118
Harvard GSAS Latinx Student Association
Harvard Islamic Society
Harvard Kennedy School Africa Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Africa Policy Journal
Harvard Kennedy School Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Equality Coalition
Harvard Kennedy School Latinx Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School LGBTQ Policy Journal
Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus
Harvard Kennedy School Progressive Caucus
Harvard Khmer Student Association
Harvard No Layoffs Campaign
Harvard Organization for Prison Education and Advocacy
Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine
Harvard Pakistan Forum
Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee
Harvard Photography Club
Harvard Primus
Harvard Prison Divestment Coalition
Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association
Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Womxn’s Association
Harvard South Asian Association
Harvard Undergraduate African Policy and Development Initiative
Harvard Undergraduate Latinxs in Finance & Technology
Harvard Undergraduate Spanish Society
Harvard Undergraduate Student Art Collective
Harvard Undergraduate Union of Mixed Students
Harvard Undergraduates for Bipartisan Solutions
Harvard Under the Surface: Mental Health Magazine
Harvard Vietnamese Association
HCS Tech for Social Good
HMS-Genetics Anti-Racism Group
Jewish Coalition for Peace
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
Labor for Palestine
Latinas Unidas de Harvard College
LGBTQ Caucus at Harvard Kennedy School
Natives at Harvard College
Nigerian Students Association
Our Harvard Can Do Better
Pakistani Students Association
Rho Nu Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Society of Arab Students
South Asian Association
Student Labor Action Movement
Texas Club of Harvard College
The Harvard Callbacks
The Harvard Chapter of Strong Women Strong Girls
The Kuumba Singers of Harvard College
The Task Force for Asian American Progressive Advocacy and Studies
The W.E.B. Du Bois Society
The YX Foundation
Undergraduate Council
Undergraduate Council Black Caucus
We Got Us

If you would like to submit a video in support of Professor West, or express what it would mean to you if he departs Harvard, please submit a recording at: tiny.cc/WestVideoSubmit

Undersigned,
[SEE MORE INFORMATION AND ALL THE SIGNATURES AT tiny.cc/WestPetitionSignatures]