Academics From The United States

"We are by no means opposed to the globalization of relationships as such—in fact, as we said, the strongest forces of Leftist internationalism have effectively led this process. The enemy, rather, is a specific regime of global relations that we call Empire."

"Empire is emerging today as the center that supports the globalization of productive networks and casts its widely inclusive net to try to envelop all power relations within its — and yet at the same time it deploys a powerful police function against the new barbarians and the rebellious slaves who threaten its order."

"Did I say that? One says so many things, and the problem is they all get written down."

"There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the ."

"He had meticulous taste, if taste is a form of discernment, and discernment a kind of care and humility toward the world, its material stuff as well as its arbitrary weathers. He was drawn to the local and to the minor, the huge field of forgotten or overlooked or insignificant details of daily life, which he was able to transcribe, without relying on either mirrors or windows, but on the capaciousness of his restless, inquisitive, integrating imagination. He seemed to have an infinite resource of words and a flexible, if sometimes dissonant, syntax into which to put them. His poems are always in the service of making new relations, so that meanings arise without the insistent correlate of understanding but, instead, offer to his readers a new way to find sense in an apprehension or awareness of the variety of this world, and the capacity of language to provide ways of perceiving and, somehow, renovating it."

"John Ashbery, incontrovertibly a great poet, remains both difficult and underread, even by his readers."

"These two guys in the front yard— Are they here to help?"

"In the beginning there are those who don't quite fit in But are somehow okay. And then some morning There are places that suddenly seem wonderful: Weather and water seem wonderful, And the peaceful night sky that arrives In time to protect us, like a sword Cutting the blue cloak of a prince."

"Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night, Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes. But will he know where to find you, Recognize you when he sees you, Give you the thing he has for you?"

"Well, there are certain stock words that I have found myself using a great deal. When I become aware of them, it is an alarm signal meaning I am falling back on something that has served in the past—it is a sign of not thinking at the present moment, not that there is anything intrinsically bad about certain words or phrases."

"When I originally started writing, I expected that probably very few people would read my poetry because in those days people didn’t read poetry much anyway."

"It didn’t pay very much, but it enabled me to get other jobs doing art criticism, which I didn’t want to do very much, but as so often when you exhibit reluctance to do something, people think you must be very good at it. If I had set out to be an art critic, I might never have succeeded."

"I am my father's father, You are your children's guilt. In history's pity and terror The child is Aeneas again; Troy is in the nursery, The rocking horse is on fire. Child labor! The child must carry His fathers on his back."

"My tattered Oscar Williams 1943 anthology, with the beautiful faces of Rukeyser, Schwartz"

"That inescapable animal walks with me, Has followed me since the black womb held, Moves where I move, distorting my gesture, A caricature, a swollen shadow, A stupid clown of the spirit's motive, Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness, The secret life of belly and bone."

"Regard the child, regard the animal, Welcome strangers, but study daily things, Knowing that heaven and hell surround us, But this, this which we say before we're sorry, This which we live behind our unseen faces, Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished, For we are incomplete and know no future, And we are howling or dancing out our souls In beating syllables before the curtain: We are Shakespearean, we are strangers."

"I no more wrote than read that book which is The self I am, half hidden as it is From one and all who see within a kiss The lounging formless blackness of an abyss. How could I think the brief years were enough To prove the reality of endless love?"

"How the false truths of the years of youth have passed! Have passed at full speed like trains which never stopped There where I stood and waited, hardly aware, How little I knew, or which of them was the one To mount and ride to hope or where true hope arrives."

"Where the light is, and each thing clear, Separate from all others, standing in its place, I drink the time and touch whatever's near, And hope for day when the whole world has that face: For what assures her present every year? In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace."

"Whence, if ever, shall come the actuality Of a voice speaking the mind's knowing, The sunlight bright on the green windowshade, And the self articulate, affectionate, and flowing, Ease, warmth, light, the utter showing, When in the white bed all things are made."

"A car coughed, starting. Morning softly Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair From underseas, kindled the looking-glass, Distinguished the dresser and the white wall. The bird called tentatively, whistled, called, Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so, O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning Again and again, while history is unforgiven."

"Each minute bursts in the burning room, The great globe reels in the solar fire, Spinning the trivial and unique away. (How all things flash! How all things flare!) What am I now that I was then? May memory restore again and again The smallest color of the smallest day: This is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn."

"I had no idea this was going to be an accurate prediction, but amazingly enough instead of 10 [years] doubling, we got nine over the 10 years, but still followed pretty well along the curve."

"The technology at the leading edge changes so rapidly that you have to keep current after you get out of school. I think probably the most important thing is having good fundamentals."

"With engineering, I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly."

"The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year... Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer."

"Some things may have been tried before their time, but if these things don't violate the laws of physics they are likely to prove possible the next time around. Engineering is a series of failures with an occasional success. At least the kind where you are really looking at new technology. You tend to try things. You try things that are extrapolations of what has happened before. A lot of them don't work. Occasionally, you hit one that does. That's the way we make progress. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly. But, I've known technical people who are very competent but who would avoid doing a critical experiment. They would kind of work around the problem and do the things where the results were relatively straightforward, but they hated to do that experiment that might tell if their whole approach was right or wrong. And these people were relatively nonproductive. Then I've known other people who weren't perhaps as bright as the ones that worked around the problem who jumped right at the heart of the matter. They turn out to be the most productive. So my single piece of advice is don't delay making the critical test. That's the one that will tell you if you are right or wrong and where to go next."

"If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the semiconductor industry, a Rolls Royce would get half a million miles per gallon, and it would be cheaper to throw it away than to park it."

"We need to recognize the destructive role played by the media in fanning the flames of the "Black-Jewish Conflict." Cornel West, bell hooks, Richard Green, Barbara Christian, Henry Louis Gates, Marian Wright Edelman, Nell Painter, Albert Raby....Why are these names not as well known outside the African American community as the names of Louis Farrakhan or Leonard Jeffries? Are they, in their diversity and dynamism, less representative of the African American community?"

"Most commonly, the public face even on positive Jewish-African American relations has been inscribed as largely male. Michael Lerner and Cornel West, though they mention gender, do so in booming patriarchal voices. It took years before they invited a woman to join their public conversations, and though their choice of partner-Susannah Heschel, Director of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth and daughter of Rabbi Heschel-is apt, might not the gentlemen have also included an African American woman? What about an African American Jew?"

"To paraphrase scholar Cornel West, you can't save a country you don't serve, and you can't lead a country you don't love. And there is much to love in this country."

"Noted UCLA professor Robin Kelley... wote... “Why Cornel West’s Tenure Fight Matters.” And he says, “Harvard has a problem with outspoken, principled faculty who take public positions that question university policy, challenge authority, or might ruffle the feathers of big donors. And when the faculty in question are scholars of color, their odds of getting through the tenure process are slim to none.”... And... the Harvard Black Law Students Association [wrote].. to the administration, “Harvard’s refusal to consider Dr. West for tenure continues a consistent pattern of practice that undermines and devalues the scholarship of Black professors and professors of color...The refusal to consider Dr. West for tenure raises concerns about the future treatment of Black academics and academics of color in a tenure process that already lacks transparency.”"

"The pre-eminent African-American intellectual of our generation."

"One of the most authentic, brilliant, prophetic and healing voices in America today."

"Cornel West thinks like a sage, acts like a warrior and writes like a poetical prophet."

"To be a Christian - a follower of Jesus Christ - is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom. (p172)"

"To many, our democratic system seems so broken that they have simply lost faith that their participation could really matter. The politics of self-interest and catering to narrow special interests is so dominant that so many ask themselves: Why vote? This disaffection stems both from the all-too-true reality of the corruptions of our system and from a deeper psychic disillusionment and disappointment. The is so formulaic, so tailored into poll-driven, focus-group-approved slogans that don't really say anything substantive or strike at the core of our lived experience; the lack of authenticity of discourse—and the underlying lack of gravitas, of penetrating insight and wisdom on the part of politicians—is numbing. But we must keep in mind that the disgust so many feel comes from a deep desire to hear more authentic expressions of insights about our lives and more genuine commitment to improving them. Many of us long for expressions of real concern both about the pain of our individual lives and about the common good [...] as opposed to the blatant catering to base interests and to narrow elite constituencies. We long for politics that in not about winning a political game but about producing better lives."

"Dr. Cornel West, one of the most important philosophers of our time"

"Famed civil rights activist Cornel West announced he is leaving his post at Harvard University’s Divinity School in a scathing resignation letter — accusing the institution of “spiritual rot” and describing it as in a state of “decay and decline.” In a letter shared to Twitter on Monday night, the professor of African American studies said he had taken an untenured position four years ago with the hope that he could “still end his career with some semblance of intellectual intensity and personal respect.... "How wrong I was!...” wrote West, 68... [He]... had previously been a tenured Harvard professor before he quit in 2002 — said it had become disheartening to see the institution in a state of “decline and decay.” ... The prominent black philosopher also said he received the “lowest increase possible” to his salary every year since he returned to campus. When he was recommended for a tenure review, the university rejected it over his support of Palestine, he said. He then lamented a lack of personal engagement and empathy from colleagues outside of work and academia, including how he only received two replies to news of his mother’s death in a newsletter. West said he was resigning with “precious memories but absolutely no regrets.”"

"Cornel West is not simply a lucid African-American guide equal to the complexities of real multiculturalism, but also an authentic teacher of hope and reason."

"The aim of fiction is to break down stereotypes. Unfortunately, the publishing and academic industries seem to profit more from reinforcing stereotypes. This is what African American intellectuals have to deal with too. That's why I feel I'm on the same wavelength with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cornel West, James Alan McPherson. Why should a minority person be made to feel guilty because she believes education leads to both self-improvement and national enlightenment? To me, class is as divisive as race."

"Cornel West, the African American philosopher and writer, spoke recently in San Francisco talking about the importance of linkages. For example, he said gay and lesbian rights are an issue in the African American community. They aren’t separate, outside of the community. Just because the issue is not welfare, or racism, or gangs, that doesn’t mean it’s not a Black community issue. I think that’s a very useful and important way to look at things. I know a lot of Latinos wouldn’t agree that gay and lesbian rights are a Latino issue. But we need to work for this understanding and make it clear that the issue is not a problem for a bunch of people outside the Latino community who happen to be gay or lesbian. It’s inside our community. Taking that kind of position is the only way that in fact makes sense."

"The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper. (p4)"

"for liberals, black people are to be “included” and “integrated” into “our” society and culture, while for conservatives they are to be “well behaved” and “worthy of acceptance” by “our” way of life. Both fail to see that the presence and predicaments of black people are neither additions to nor defections from American life, but rather constitutive elements of that life. (p3)"

"The Democratic Party is beyond redemption at this point when it comes to seriously speaking to the needs of poor and working people… The neofascism that's escalating is predicated on the rottenness of a system in which the Democratic Party facilitates that frustration and desperation because it can't present an alternative… If America is unable to present an alternative to the Democratic Party, then we're going fascist."

"If the only alternative to fascism we produce is a corporate-driven, milquetoast, neoliberal , fascism will come to America. Let us be very clear. It’s like a America."

"We’re at such a low point in the . Its spiritual decay and its immoral decadence are so profound that we have to begin on the foundational level of a spiritual awakening and a moral reckoning. Organized greed. Institutionalized hatred. Routinized indifference to the lives of poor and working people of all colors. We’ve got to get beyond an analysis of the predatory capitalist processes that have saturated every nook and cranny of the culture. We’ve got to get beyond the ways in which the political system has been colonized by corporate wealth and by monied elite. We’ve got to get beyond that sense of impotence of the citizenry. These are all the signs of an . The only thing that we have to add is military overreach, and we see that as well."

"With a few glorious and glaring exceptions, the shadow of Jim Crow was cast in its new glittering form expressed in the language of superficial diversity... The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large... To witness a faculty enthusiastically support a candidate for tenure then timidly defer to a rejection based on the Harvard administration’s hostility to the Palestinian cause was disgusting... We all know the mendacious reasons given had nothing to do with academic standards... This kind of narcissistic academic professionalism, cowardly deference to the anti-Palestinian prejudices of the Harvard administration, and indifference to my Mother’s death constitutes an intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep deaths..."

"It’s time for me to go back to the great Union Theological Seminary. That’s my institutional home, my brother. I can stretch out and try to be a truth teller and bear witness, still learn and listen, but also be in the middle of the Big Apple. Nothing like it... Union Theological Seminary means so much to me, because in that context I can be the full, free Black man, the Jesus-loving, free Black man, fundamentally committed to focusing on the oppressed around the world."

"Harvard now, I think, suffers from a kind of self-idolatry, that it needs to be critical of itself in order to grow. And again, if you can be in contact with the best of its past, then it’s got a chance. But if it just remains well adjusted to the status quo, generating careerist and opportunist students rather than critically oriented students who have a heart and soul, concerned about suffering here and around the world — then Harvard has a chance. I’m not giving up on Harvard, but I am making my way to New York."