On Jan. 11, Dr. Cornel West sat down with Chancellor Rebecca Chopp at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts for a conversation about how his work can help address the challenges that higher education and society face today. West is a professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has written 20 books, including his two most popular, “Race Matters” and “Democracy Matters,” as well as his most recent, “Black Prophetic Fire.”
Before the conversation began, West introduced himself as a “Jesus-lover, free Black man, who always tells the truth.” He told the crowd to remember that the current moment that they’re in right now is bigger than themselves. He said, “The suffering is more than your own individual suffering.” He questioned what the crowd was going to do in their short amount of time of living.
After he introduced himself, Chancellor Chopp asked West questions about race, higher education and students in today’s society. West’s answers focused on the importance of students finding their voice. He told the crowd that it’s important to ask themselves, “What does it mean to be human? What type of person am I going to be?” He later continued, “Your voice is like your fingerprint. There’s only one like you. There will never be, in the history of cosmos, another you. And that’s a beautiful thought, but a terrifying thought. So you have to have courage to think critically, courage to learn how to love truth and goodness and beauty, courage to stand over against the crowd — the mob, courage not to defer to superficial popularity.”
The last half was left to members of the crowd to ask West questions. There were questions about the mass incarceration rate in the U.S., indigenous rights and how elders should participate in the current social movements that the professor gave his insight on.
One person, however, did not ask a question but made a comment on the name of the tennis courts on DU’s campus. The court is named Stapleton Tennis Pavilion, after the son of Benjamin F. Stapleton. Benjamin F. Stapleton was the mayor of Denver in the 1920s and 1940s, as well as a high-ranking member of the Klu Klux Klan. The student, a third-year law student at the Sturm College of Law, spoke about how he feels when passing by the name engraved into the court every day on his way to his classes, knowing that his ancestors were harmed by the man with the same name. He asked for Chopp’s personal commitment to change the name on the tennis courts as soon as possible. After a debate between the Chancellor, students in the crowd and West, Chopp said that, “It sounds to me like we’re going to open this one up,” referring to the case about whether the tennis court should stay named after Stapleton’s son or not.
You can watch the full event here.
