Cornel West Is in a Fight With Harvard, Again The popular professor, who left Harvard in 2002 after a dispute with its president, says he may leave again if the university does not grant him tenure. Tenure is the difference between “first-class citizenship and second-class citizenship in the academy,” Cornel West said. “I refuse to go through the back door.”Credit...Mark Makela/Getty Images March 2, 2021 When Cornel West’s Harvard position came up for review recently, Dr. West said he believed his long career as a public intellectual and his past tenure at Princeton, Yale and Harvard itself qualified him for not just a renewal of his contract, but for tenure, the ultimate honor.