SOURCE: “The Attack on Cornel West: Racism and Media Cynicism,” in Tikkun, Vol. 10, No. 2, March-April, 1995, p. 7.

In the following essay, the critic refutes negative criticism leveled against West by Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic.

Having profiled The Bell Curve and helped give national prominence to the racist attack on the intelligence of ordinary Black folk, The New Republic’s literary editor Leon Wieseltier focuses five pages of his magazine on Cornel West, to show that these uppity Blacks who are lauded as the leading intellectuals are also undeserving of respect. Wieseltier was once a young Harvard student with great potential, so it must irk him that this Black intellectual has tenure at Harvard while Wieseltier’s primary accomplishment was to become errand-boy and hatchetman for Martin Peretz at The New Republic. Constantly seeking reassurances for his wounded ego from the fawning crowds of academics who hope that...