Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 decided to leave Harvard because of fundamental differences with University President Lawrence H. Summers about the purpose of education, one of West’s close friends and colleagues said Saturday night.

In an address entitled “God, Cornel West and Latinos at Harvard: Education for Liberation,” Rudenstine Professor of Latin American Studies David L. Carrasco downplayed the personality conflict between West and Summers that media accounts have emphasized.

Instead, he said, West left because of a split over more philosophical issues.

Carrasco said he thinks Summers believes the purpose of an education is “Veritas for its own sake—in other words truth as an end within itself.”

Referring to Summers’ inauguration speech, Carrasco contrasted the president’s view with what West calls “prophetic pragmatism”—a belief that the purpose of an education is to make a tangible difference in the world.

“West thinks of God as an agent…and one must be a part of that agency,” he said.

Carrasco delivered the keynote address to last weekend’s East Coast Chicano Student Forum conference, being held at Harvard. Close to 100 Latino students from Harvard, MIT, and Boston University attended the speech in Winthrop Dining Hall as part of a weekend-long conference sponsored by RAZA.

Carrasco began by joking about his friendship with West over the past decade. Only last year, Carrasco left Princeton for Harvard at his friend’s insistence. But now, as West has gone the opposite way, those at Harvard are left wondering why he left.

“It was me,” Carrasco quipped.

As he moved on to more serious points, Carrasco suggested a difference in ideologies between Summers and West was not the entire story behind their dispute.

In a meeting with West last October, Summers reportedly questioned West’s dedication to scholarship and took him to task for making a “rap” CD and working on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s political campaign.

“I know from several conversations with Cornel that he felt as if he had never been disrespected like this before in his life, and that is saying a lot given what this man has done,” Carrasco said.

He defended West’s academic work and said the CD was simply an attempt to reach out to more students.

“If anyone in Mass. Hall had even listened to the CD, they would have realized that it was not ‘rap,’” Carrasco said.

According to Carrasco, West agonized over his decision until quite recently and it pained him to leave.