‘I Don’t Know If We’re Friends Anymore’: Hannity and Cornel West Brawl in Made-for-TV Fiasco
Fox News host Sean Hannity and independent presidential candidate Cornel West brawled on Friday over the treatment of former Harvard University President Claudine Gay, during which Hannity suggested that West was no longer a friend.
On his Fox News show, Friday, Hannity laid into West for suggesting that the attacks on Gay – the “first Black woman president of Harvard” – were racist in nature and that plagiarism allegations were not the real reason behind her ousting from Harvard.
“My friend– former friend, I don’t know if we’re friends anymore, Dr. Cornel West,” said Hannity, introducing the third-party presidential candidate. The host continued:
I mean, you always call me “Brother Hannity” and I know you teach divinity, but Dr. West, really? This is really beneath you, if you don’t mind me being very blunt. For you to go to the race card and say that Dr. Gay was pushed out because of racism, that’s not why she was pushed out. You know the code of conduct as well as anybody at Harvard. You almost got tenure at Harvard, you understand it well, and you know that if similar comments about the elimination or genocide of any, quote, “identity group,” African-Americans, people in the LGBTQ+ community, if any of these comments that were made against the Jewish people were made against other groups, you would not be saying that’s racism.
“Why did you sink to this low and claim racism?” he questioned.
West replied, “I know Sister Gay and she doesn’t have an anti-Semitic bone in her body. She didn’t speak strong enough, I had a critique of that in the Boston Globe, it was a weak response at the congressional committee, but that does not mean she is anti-Semitic. It doesn’t mean she ought to resign.”
He continued:
You know and I know there has been attempts to impose tremendous pressures on universities with big money donors dictating various conditions under which they will give, and there’s been attempts to reshape universities. Now, you and I know there’s orthodoxies in the universities, I’m against all orthodoxies, there’s no doubt about that, but the very notion that you think it was about plagiarism, that’s window dressing. Laurence Tribe plagiarized from Peter J. Abrams much more than she did and he remained a prized professor at Harvard Law.
West noted that there were “a whole host of folk who plagiarized and don’t get this kind of vicious treatments,” before listing the various racial attacks Gay had received.
“You’re gonna say that has nothing to do with race? Has nothing to do with race, Brother? Come on!” he shouted.
After Hannity replied that West “should be leading the charge” against sentiment calling for the eradication of Israel, West said:
I stand against any genocide, brother. I stand against the genocide of your Irish brothers and sisters, I stand against the genocide of Black people, I stand against the genocide of Jews, but I also stand against the genocide of Palestinians and it is no accident that some of the same people who were behind pushing her out, [Bill] Ackman himself, Summers himself, whole host of Blum and others who have been against affirmative action, they also won’t say a word about the genocide against Palestinians.
He concluded, “So when you tell me you’re concerned about genocide, have you said a word about the genocide of Palestinians, Brother?”
Watch above via Fox News.
