Cornel West unexpectedly announced Monday he is running for president as the candidate for a left-wing, populist third-party.
“In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice which takes the form of running for president of the United States as a candidate for the People’s Party,” West said in a video posted on Twitter.
“Neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon and Big Tech,” he added.
West, whose work has focused on philosophy and Black history, gained prominence as a professor at universities including Harvard, Princeton and Yale and has been vocal advocate for progressive causes as a media commentator.
West was a surrogate to Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and has criticized former President Barack Obama as too centrist, particularly over his handling of issues important to Black people and the nation’s poor.
He clashed publicly with Larry Summers, when the former US Treasury secretary was serving as president of Harvard University. West accused Summers of a lack of commitment to diversity at the Ivy League school, while Summers said West was too preoccupied with commitments outside of his scholarship.
West left Harvard for Princeton in 2002 after the dispute, and holds the title professor emeritus at the university. Summers is a contributor to Bloomberg.
“Do we have what it takes? We shall see, but some of us are going to go down fighting,” West said in the video posted Monday.
