Ju
30%, 2021
Thope and pray you and your family are well! This summer is a scorcher! Here is my
brief and candid letter of resignation: “How sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School
in such decline and decay. The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented
yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large. When I arrived
four years ago - with a salary less than what I received 15 years earlier and with no tenure status
er being a University Professor at Harvard and Princeton - Thoped and prayed I could still end
my career with some semblance of intellectual intensity and personal respect. How wrong I was!
With a few glorious and glaring exceptions, the shadow of Jim Crow was cast in its new
glittering form expressed in the language of superficial diversity: all my courses were subsumed
under Afro-American Religious Studies, including those on Existentialism, American
Democracy and The Conduct of Life, no possible summer salary alongside the lowest increase
possible every year. Yet I delivered two convocation addresses and one commencement speech
in four years. I was promised a year sabbatical but could only take one semester in practice. And
to witness 4 faculty enthusiastically support a candidate for tenure then timidly defer to a
rejection based on the Harvard administration's hostility to the Palestinian cause was disgusting,
We all knew the mendacious reasons given had nothing to do with academic standards. When
my committee recommended a tenure review - also rejected by the Harvard administration -
knew my academic achievements and student teaching meant far less than their politic:
prejudices. Even my good friends in the A fro-Americ:
and African Studies Department were
paralyzed, given their close relations to the administration. And after teaching extra courses,
including five courses in one year, this silence continued. When the announcement of the death
of my beloved Mother appeared in the regular newsletter, [received two public replies (just as
that of my colleague Dr. Jacqueline Olga Cooke-Rivers who received none when her blessed
Mother died). Any ordinary announcement about a lecture, award or professional advancement
receives about twenty replies! This kind of narcissistic academic professionalism, cowardly
deference to the anti-Palestinian prejudic.
Mother's
of the Harvard administration, and indifference to my
ath constitute an intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths
In my case, a
serious
commitment to Veritas requires resignation - with precious memories but absolutely no
regrets!”
Cornel Wiese