> >
> > Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - June 20, 2002
> >
> > Neoconservative Scholars Pull Out of Conference After Learning That
> > Cornel West Will Attend
> > By PIPER FOGG
> >
> > Several prominent neoconservative scholars and writers have backed
> > out of a conference at the Graduate Center of the City University of
> >
> > New York -- after finding out that Cornel West was among those who
> > would be participating. Organizers of the conference, which will
> > examine the legacy of a neoconservative hero, Sidney Hook, said the
> > scholars objected to Mr. West's presence because they thought he was
> >
> > "not enough of a scholar" of Hook.
>
>Whatever one might think of West's work as a whole, the fact is
>he did provide in *The American Evasion of Philosophy* a
>groundbreaking treatment of the young Sidney Hook's work
>when he was a Marxist,
Fiest of all, West is perfectly able, if no heavyweight. His early book (based on his diss) on Marxism and Ethics is fine--it's not as good, say, as Rodney Peffer's magisterial Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice, but that's a high standard; Rodney's book is about the best on the subject. West's book is every bit as good as, say Steven Lukes' widely cited Marxism and Morality. Wests' Evasion is a perfectly competent study of pragmatism, not deep, but a good survey. It is far far better than Diggen's own pop survey of pragmatism, which is OK for an introduction, though replete with inaccuracies.
Second, the neocons are full of equine excrement, as usual. Everyone who goes to conferences regularly participate with second-raters, likeDiggens,lightweights, and outright frauds, such as Hilton Kramer, who has never done anything worth reading all theway through. (I don't make this judgm,ent on political grounds. Some of the neocons posted as the conference are really first rate, like Gertrude Himmelfarb. And as regular LOBsters know, this fan of Hayek, Mises,and Posner is a sucker for good right wing scholarship.)
Most scholars fall into these categories--99% of all scholarly work is dispensable.. If I or any acholar refused to go to a conference because everyone who spoke wasn't absolutely top-notch, that would basically shut down conferences. Everyone knows this. The neocons who pulled this stunt therefore are merely dissing West, presumably because he's a soft-left celebrity,a nd also because he's black; they'd never do it to a white loser. Same as Summers' attack on West; he's fair game because he's black. I'll believe otherwise when I see West go after white lightweights on the Harvard faculty. I could name about three dozen off the top of my head, many of whom have accomplishments rather more slender than West's.
jks
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