http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/national/10HARV.html
"Dr. West questioned whether Mr. Summers, a Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, was motivated by partisanship when he brought up Mr. Bradley's campaign.
"The chilling question is, Would he have raised the issue of my three weeks away if I was working for the Gore campaign as opposed to the Bradley campaign or the Nader campaign or the Sharpton campaign," Dr. West said."
And here's the charmers at the New Republic: "It should be no surprise that Harvard's new president, Lawrence Summers, recently asked Professor Cornel West to get serious about his scholarship. Summers, after all, is the rare university president who cares more about academics than fund-raising; and West's activities of late--spending more time recording a rap CD and stumping for Al Sharpton than doing academic work--could not have sat well with him. But West has responded to Summers's reasonable request by raising the issue of race, privately questioning, according to The Boston Globe, Summers's support of affirmative action--which in turn has led Jesse Jackson and others to question it publicly. West, of course, loves to mau-mau; and the confrontation with Summers was simply too good an opportunity to pass up. In an effort to raise the stakes, West is now threatening to leave Harvard for Princeton. So the question is: Will West continue to do nothing at Harvard? Or head south to do nothing at Princeton?" http://www.thenewrepublic.com/011402/notebook011402_west.html