Talk:Cornel West

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[edit] Mission

Sooooo ТyBother me 06:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Who is he? I assume his work on race is why he has an article, but what has he done or said that means he deserves an article? SophieWilder 07:27, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Actually, he's a well-known social and political activist. I'd tend to think that, if someone were to improve the article, you could find the information to make it on-mission. Reckless Noise Symphony (talk) 08:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
From what I know of his writings, some of his ideas and rhetoric hew dangerously close to New Age mysticism, and I've seen accusations that even Race Matters makes liberal use of unsourced arguments and unsupported claims. I believe I also read on Wikipedia that he has thrown his weight behind a certain economic theory or something that is considered pure pseudoscience by nearly all professionals in the field. I haven't read any of his work myself, so I can't really confirm any of this thoroughly, but he might very possibly be a full-on Moonbat, which combined with his status as a public figure and intellectual celebrity would make him very relevant to the wiki. Also, the information on the article page is out-of-date; West no longer works at Princeton, at the very least. 74.8.88.74 (talk) 00:54, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
His theological work could be relevant. I haven't read anything by him beyond a few short essays and opinion pieces. One of my friends has a big hate-on for him -- says his early work was important but that he is mostly interested in self-promotion these days (see The Matrix). Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:18, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
That's an impression of him I've heard a lot - that he's "sold out" his intellectual credibility for the sake of celebrity. However, looking at his supposedly solid earlier work I see there's some controversy there as well, and not just over the inevitably controversial subject matter. At any rate, most of what I've heard from him seems to fall into two broad categories: on the one hand, familiar leftist/black nationalist political ideology (albeit with little empirical support); on the other, quasi-coherent gibberish. (See his presence in some of the Matrix special features for the latter.) Dunno whether that's a new trend for him or not. 74.8.91.43 (talk) 02:12, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
So let's see that stuff in the article then. SophieWilder 19:44, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
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