CSPAN will profile him for 3 hours this Sunday(?), as they did with Shelby Foote last weekend. Now that was interesting. This week though?... I doubt if anyone can take 3 hours of Cornel West.
I met him once in the Hyatt Regency Wacker Drive in Chicago. He was wandering in the underground pedestrian walkway that connects the hotel to Michigan Avenue. He was talking to himself like some juiced up wino dissembling after a pint of white port. He is also bucktoothed and homely as hell. I don't know how anyone could put up with him for more than a minute or two.
Speaking of hard to take, C-SPAN Radio has been running an ad for the upcoming Cornel West appearance, constantly, over the past week or so. That means constantly having to hear a 10- or 15-second clip from his rap CD. Boy, is it ridiculous!
Andrew Sullivan has the right take on Cornel West, calling him "pompous."
I don't think Harvard had a Latino Studies department when I was doing my doctoral studies there in the 1970's. I wonder why it would need it, since it has always taught Spanish and Portuguese language and literature in its Romance Languages Department.