Dr. Cornel West, Twitter screenshot
Philosopher, political activist, social critic, and former educator Dr. Cornel West let out a shocker on June 5. He announced that he will be running for president as a third-party candidate. “I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States as a candidate for the People’s Party,” West said in his announcement posted on Twitter.
“I enter for the quest for truth. I enter for the quest of justice. And the presidency is just one vehicle we pursue that truth and justice,” he continued.
West, 70, is the former professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University.
“Neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about big tech,” West said. “Do we have what it takes? We shall see.”
After a series of disputes with then-university president Lawrence Summers, West first left a Harvard position in 2002 to join Princeton University instead. He later returned to Harvard, leaving again in 2021 over a tenure dispute. he accused the school of “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths.” He is currently the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary.
Back in 2020, West sharply criticized the Democratic Party, pointing out the party had failed to protect and uplift the working class. He also said that he was frustrated that he felt he had no choice but to vote for Joe Biden for president. He called Biden a “neoliberal disaster.”
“What we got to vote for [was] the mediocre, milquetoast neoliberal centrist because he’s better than fascism, and a fascist catastrophe is worse than a neoliberal disaster,” West said of his decision to vote for Biden, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported. “Now, we’ve just got to come to terms with the neoliberal disaster.”
West has also said that reparations shouldn’t be used to capture the Black vote, and that a deeper discussion about reparations is needed.
In a speech in February, he said, “So the question is can we really see what the suffering has been for indigenous peoples Black Folk and others? Then can we feel it, or are we just distant from it and indifferent? And then what we’re going to do about it? To see, the feel, the act all three…so when I think about reparations, my fundamental question is who is interested in a quest for the truth about the history of this country?”
Dr. Cornel West, Twitter screenshot, https://twitter.com/CornelWest/status/1665743761551548416?s=20
