Alas, to be a fly on the wall at Memorial Hall at Harvard University Thursday afternoon.

The Root spent an hour speaking to Cornel West on Dec. 8 on a wide range of issues, including former President Barack Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, neoliberalism, President Donald Trump and, of course, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Watch an edited version of our conversation above.

I love Cornel West. Part of the reason I am a fan of his is that, before my nonfame and lack of fortune at The Root, I taught a college-level course called “Race as an Economic Construct.” The idea of the course was to eliminate the subjectivity of race theory by explaining race in America through the lens of…

As a result of Cornel West’s public criticism of Ta-Nehisi Coates in the New York Times last month, we at The Root asked the good doctor over to our studios to have a word (this being Cornel West, many words) with me and senior reporter Terrell J. Starr.

I’m writing this from the third floor of the brownstone in Pittsburgh’s Northside that my wife and I have been renting for a year and a half now. I’m in a bedroom that has been repurposed as both my office and my de facto closet. My daughter’s bedroom is on the same floor, and the bedroom my wife and I share is…

Did President Barack Obama let us down?

A few months ago, I was at a Bernie Sanders rally in Birmingham, Ala., surrounded by white people excited to see their democratic socialist Santa Claus. After a mixtape filled with tunes by James Taylor, the Beatles and Bob Marley, a performance by a gospel choir and a short speech by the dynamic Nina Turner, the…

Hillary Clinton cares more about police officers getting away with killing black people than Donald Trump does, according to Real Time host Bill Maher. And on his HBO show Friday night, Maher exploited the brutal slayings of Terence Crutcher and Walter Scott in an effort to get Cornel West to agree with him.

Cornel West recently continued down his long, winding road to breaking my heart.

I'm not a fan of Ta-Nehisi Coates. I respect the hell out of the man, but a fan? Nah. I understand, however, that many people are and I am okay with this. But me, myself, and I? We are still not a fan. It's nothing personal. I don't know the man nor have I ever seen him in person. He never stole my bike or tried to…

Everything that could have been said about Michael Eric Dyson's 170,000 word critique of Cornel West has likely already been said. The forensic examination is near complete, the deconstructions have been deconstructed, and somewhere in America, Miley Cyrus is still twerking.

1. It's not terribly uncommon for the type of people who'd even be interested in reading Michael Eric Dyson's thoughts about Cornel West to rib on Dyson for his often torrential and occasionally obnoxious loquaciousness. He is a man very in love with both the words escaping his pen and coming out of his mouth, and the…