Cornel R. West '74 is a man of his word. A devout believer in the academic as activist, he has taken his "variety of African ways of being" around the country.

Harvard has been the latest receipent of his special brand of scholarship.

With his rumbling cadence and a minister's appreciation of the power of the spoken word, West delivered this year's W.E.B. Du Bois lectures, in which he focused on "Being in Blackness: The Struggle Against Nobodiness."

The scholar took as his mantle the "Black Freedom Struggle," calling on people to take up the "bloodstained banner" of "radical democratic activism" and preserve this struggle for freedom.

He says that this movement is being lost due to a lack of "nuanced historicism" among today's generation of scholars and students.

For West, however, philosophy is not confined to the abstract but is a practical touchstone for life. Using his own life as an example, West urged Tuesday's audience "bridge the gap between one's rhetoric and reality, one's promise and performance."

West is a man who sees no division between activism and academia; a man who believes in amalgam and has adopted this "multi-contextuality" as a means of defining himself.

The scholar said, in an interview with The Crimson yesterday, that he is distressed that academics have not transmitted the best of the Black freedom movement--this empowering multi-contexuality--to younger generations.

Therefore, academics, he says, have contributed to the loss of hope among the youth.

West gives the example of rapper Willie D, whose heart he says has been "colonized by rage," due to this lack of hope.

This dereliction of intellectual duty has made the academic ground fertile for the growth of a "sentimental and non-critical nostalgia for the past," he says. In addition, "moral vision has been replaced with narrow and naked group interest" among the youth.

Today's young Black intellectuals are grappling with a guilt resulting from being afforded opportunities many of their "brothers and sisters" do not have. For this reason, West is greatly concerned about upcoming generations of Black students and scholars.

West said that the elimination of this class guilt can be achieved only by maintaining links with the larger Black community.

Citing his work with the Black Panther's prison program while an undergraduate, West emphasized the necessity of both types of "cultural work."

West, who grew up in Sacramento, Calif., entered Harvard at 17 after attending all-Black public schools. While at the College, a place he says "equipped and empowered him to be a Black freedom fighter cutting against the grain," West began his career as an academic activist.