Moderator: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us here the press conference with Professor, author and 2024 US presidential candidate, Dr Cornel West is about to start. 

At the start, I would just like to ask Dr West to tell us a bit more about what he’s done today, and just go from center stage so we can start with Dr West, and then we’ll open the floor to questions. 

Dr West: Indeed we thank you my dear brother, Emmanuel. I appreciate you being so kind to me, all day.

I first just want to salute brother Paddy and brother Jeffrey from Ireland for having the vision and courage to facilitate our coming together. As you all know, these are the initial founders (of Web Summit) 

Brother Rama Shu, teacher at UCLA, my dear friend and colleague, facilitated my coming, because I don’t always get a chance to try to say what I have to say in the context of a tech conference, and I always try to make connections between the spiritual and social and existential and economic and personal and political, some sense of the whole, it’s so easy to get locked into specialized fears and slights, get locked into silos, as it were, and you’re unable to be able to stay in contact with all of the other dimensions of our historical moment, as well as one’s own sense of being a human being.

So you better just talk about what does it mean to be, what does it mean being a human being, even when you’re in high tech or low tech any other kind of tech, and we had a good time, and we asked questions, rich, high quality, and listen, I’m a jazz man in the world of ideas and a blues man in the life of the mind. 

So always come in with a sense of receptivity, listening, taking things in as I attempt to critically filter so that I can merge the stronger force for good. So I was just blessed to be here. You all are very kind to be be here as well, and I’m going to learn from you all as well. So any questions, queries, please do not hesitate. 

Q: My name is Beata Chalet, and I run the business growth architect show for founders of the future. We live at the intersection of strategy and spirituality. And my question to you is, how does it intersect with tech, spirituality, strategy and technology, which is a loaded question, but maybe you can shed some of them from your perspective. 

CW: Thank you so much. Very much so. And which particular city or country are you from? LA? Oh, yes indeed, indeed, LA needs a lot of spirituality. (Laughter) You know, we in the American, the US Empire, I should say, we need a whole lot for a number of different reasons, but one is, I understand technology in the dual sense that they’ve done doing technology, both an art as well as a science. So it’s not a matter of just flattening out the complexity in terms of the human and humane elements that can go hand in hand with it. And it’s not just a matter of reducing it to art, as if the quantitative analysis, as if the physics, the mathematics and science don’t play an important role. 

But I think this is true for spirituality too.

To me spirituality is wrestling with the art of living, the art of living. So it’s not some ephemeral thing. It’s not some ghostly, ghastly thing that is somehow on the margins or ornamental to a human life.

And strategy is phronesis, what the Greeks would call practical wisdom. And there is no living without practical wisdom. There’s no artistry in living without practical wisdom. 

So the question becomes, how then, do these various forms of art and science and practical wisdom come together? And we know it has a whole lot to do with finding your vocation, finding your voice, and taken seriously, virtues, especially the enabling virtue, which is courage. All the other virtues are empty, and the thinking similar, which is no courage. 

And one of my challenges to the group was that: to be shaped into the professorial, managerial strata in an advanced capitalist society does not put a premium on courage and cutting against the grain. 

It puts a premium on conformity, upward mobility, making money and spectacle and image and status. And those are always there. Every society has it. 

But if you lose sight of the spiritual and the moral dimensions that have to do with virtue, you have to get out of your ego and beyond your narcissism and your smartness. Smartness easily is fetishized, and you lose a connection to the moral, the spiritual, the humble and what it means to be of service to something bigger than your ego, your pocket book, or your next commodity that you want to possess.

So that was part of what we were dealing with there. Of course, Los Angeles is an ideal place to begin to wrestle with this. I grew up in Sacramento, so I’m not too far away, not too far away. 

But right now in the American empire. You know, we’ve, America’s always wrestled with what it means to be great. And all the great literary works from Moby Dick, Scarlet Letter, Toni Morrison Beloved, Gershwin’s Rhapsody, Coltrane’s Love Supreme transformed into simply generating worship of a golden calf and transforming the golden rule to he who has the gold rules. Can there be something deeper that can become institutionalized in culture and even in politics. 

And that’s always a challenge, not just for USA, it’s true for the species, because most of human history, the history of organized greed and weaponized hatred and institutionalized indifference to the poor, that’s what most of history is. Echoes of the slaughterhouse, and Edward Gibbons said it’s little more than the register of human crimes and follies, and they have not been proven wrong. 

But the beautiful thing is even in human wretchedness there is something wonderful about us, and technology is one of the manifestations of it, making creativity, the breakthroughs, the innovations, the sense of adventure. Whitehead said it was music, metaphysics and mathematics, the three highest forms of the human spirit. And he’s not always wrong. He’s not always right. He’s got some powerful points. Technology is one of the manifestations of that ill and good, positive and negative. 

Thank you so much. Thank you. 

Sorry to go on too long. 

Dr West, honored to ask you a question. My name is Moy Dougal. I run an agency in my career and a podcast called High Agency. I want to ask you a specific question about the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. (Laughter) There’s a metaphor, a connection to struggle, poetry, art, and perhaps a perspective that there’s a machine that is wildly successful. And I think on some level, we were sort of wrestling with it as Canadians, right, because there’s a somewhat of an obligation to uphold Drake but then also an appreciation for the fact that there’s an authentic connection to struggle and art and poetry. Where else are you seeing these metaphors play out? And can you give us your take on the Kendrick Lamar beef. 

I appreciate that question. Tech has real cosmopolitan sensibilities here. Well, I tell you this. That I grew up on the chocolate side of Sacramento, California, Shiloh Baptist Church, and there was a brother who played in my church every fifth Sunday. We knew him as Sylvester, but he’s known to the world for the genius that he is. His name is Sly Stone, and he founded Sly and the Family Stone. Larry Graham was one of the greatest bass players, and Larry Graham’s brother is who? Drake’s father, Mr. Graham. That’s why in the Kendrick Lamar responses, he calls him Graham, just like he calls himself Duckworth, because Kendrick Lamar comes from the south side of Chicago. That’s where his parents come from. His father was part of gang culture and then made his way to Compton. So they’re really Chicagoans in Compton, but raising their genius boy in Compton. So the histories are very important. 

And you know, he’s named after Eddie Kendricks, who sings falsetto for the Temptations. Kendrick Lamar. That’s Eddie Kendrick from Birmingham, Alabama. She’s another towering figure. You’ll do all of our temptations more time we won’t go ahead. Wow, absolutely.

 So what do we have? Well, on one hand, you have a genius. Kendrick Lamar. I  don’t think Drake’s a genius. I think he’s a highly, highly, highly talented artist. I don’t think he’s a genius. What’s the difference between Curtis Mayfield and Wilson Pickett? Wilson Pickett’s a talented brother. Curtis Mayfield genius. Stevie Wonder, genius. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody’s humanity the same doesn’t make any difference. 

But what happens then, of course, now you have brother Drake’s got a vanilla mother, and get complicated, that he’s not from the US Empire. He’s from Canada, but he’s connected by his father to chocolate Oakland. His father’s quite a musician too. You know that Graham family, in fact, their mother was a leading evangelical singer in Oakland. They started the Graham family, so you got Drake’s father and his uncle and his grandmother, and it get complicated, and that just sets the stage for the beef. 

I love both of them brothers, I met Drake. He’s got a wonderful spirit. I met him years ago, before he was really famous. He’s got a wonderful spirit about him, and the fact that he brought Kendrick in to be with him in 2010 2012 – he could’ve chose anybody. He chose this particular genius from Compton to travel with him all around the country and the world. That’s important for the backdrop, in terms of the human and humane connections. 

But the clash takes place, and it’s been very unfortunate for brother Drake, I think that he has been unable to triumph, God bless him, and be with him, you know. And I think it’s unfortunate that a lot of the ugly ad hominem attacks on both sides, often times, become much more visible. I like the anthem from Kendrick Lamar “when we went to jail in Ferguson, we went to jail too. It’s going to be all right.” 

Now, Not Like Us has become the anthem. Give me “it’s gonna be all right” rather than Not Like Us, if there’s gonna be an anthem. So that’s another unfortunate side of it. But you know, competitions, competitions, brothers will be brothers. Men will be men. Patriarchal folk with sensibilities will be patriarchal folk with sensibilities. So they have to crush each other a bit as they live, rather than lifting together.

If I had a chance to talk to both of them, you know what I would say? Obviously, you know, it’d be nice if you had a sense of history in which almost the same month the jazz critics told Sonny Rollins, you are the colossus of the saxophone. And told Coltrane, you are the colossus of the saxophone. You all fight it out. 

And what did they do? Sonny Rollins, who’s living right outside of East River, he invites Coltrane to his place. He said, we’re not gonna let these folk get in the way. We tied to the music, we tied to freedom, we tied to dignity, we tied to integrity, we tied to something bigger than us. And we don’t exist without Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and Sarah Bond and Billie Holliday and Drake and Kendrick can sit down and say, We don’t exist without Biggie, without Pac, without dot, dot, dot. Tradition – bigger than us, music – bigger than us, people suffering – bigger than us. They’re going to do what you got to do and raise your voice, and do what you got to do and raise your voice in your own Canadian way and in your Compton way. 

And the irony is, 10-20, years from now, they both gonna be gone. They both gonna be gone. That’s how life is. That’s how traditions are. And you hope that their genius and their talent will be picked up. 

But right now, you know, you just got this fetishized moment of these two black brothers going at each other. It’s just so ugly. Does that make sense my brother? Absolutely, yeah. Salute you though. 

Q: Hi, I’m Taylor Simone. I’m a journalist and correspondent from Vancouver, Dr Kona West, my question is, during these challenging times, with Trump back in power and tariffs, there has been a lot of political tension between the US and Canada, and I’m wondering, what do you think we need to do to get through these trialing and divisive times. 

CW: Appreciate your question. I mean, one thing is that what I’ve learned, I told Christian folk earlier today that I don’t think we should ever be surprised by evil or paralyzed by despair. 

(JE: Wow) 

See, I come from 400 years of vicious enslavement, Jim Crow lynching, 244 years of the most barbaric modern slavery, and another 100 years of neo slavery. 

So you can never allow the catastrophe to have the last word, but you can never deny the catastrophe either, and Trump is just part of another catastrophe, organized greed and weaponized hatred. And I was talking about before, so the first thing you try to do is not panic. And I think in Canada, you said, Oh my god, we’re right next to this US Empire, with all of that greed and hatred escalating daily, with a President who’s beneath mediocrity. 

If he actually enacted mediocrity, that would be his summa cum laude, because he’s so used to saying anything and getting away with it. He’s so used to lacking accountability. His whole life has been one that lacked accountability and answerability and responsibility, and so he’s able to promote mendacity lying all the time. And I don’t, you know, I’m not saying this put down his humanity, but I’m just trying to be truthful about him. I met him over 40 years ago. He was lying then, now, he was lying at the peak of the US Empire, with all of the frightening consequences that go along with that. 

So I would think in Canada, you would simply say, looks like the American Empire is experiencing a profound level of spiritual decay and more decrepitude. And we hope that folk in the United States don’t give up and all come to Canada. Last thing you need is the invasion of USA in Canada, believe me, you. 

But on the other hand, then, stand your ground. You’ve got to stand your ground, and Canada has to make sure that they learn lessons, that they minimize their own organized greed. Got problems in Canada, indigenous peoples, working peoples, gays and lesbian and precious trans and so forth. You learn your lesson the way Athens tried to learn from Sparta. 

That’s how we’re not going to be. 

That’s Socrates. I’ve seen these other city states. 

We’re not gonna be like evil, authoritarian, narrow, parochial. 

What are they gonna be Socrates? Questioning, adventurous, self critical, humble. You gonna end up getting crucified, Socrates. 

You don’t say. 

So many of the folk who are truth tellers and justice secrets end up being assassinated, character assassination, literal assassination. Drinking of hemlock on the cross. Go on and on, Hebrew scripture, you see it Eastern religions as well, the folk who are cutting against the grain. And so in the end, for me, it’s a matter of just trying to sustain our solidarity, our deep human solidarity across national lines, human beings in Canada, next to the US Empire and those of us in the belly of the beast. But recognize, recognizing, even in that beast, there’s some wonderful folk holding on the integrity honesty and decency. So that’s the beginning of an answer.

I’m glad to be in Vancouver. Dale brought me just a few weeks ago to University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. Vancouver is really a fascinating place. Now, I know you got indigenous peoples who are wrestling with all kinds of structures of domination here, working people as well. I know you still got patriarchy, homophobia. I know my brothers and sisters from the Caribbean and other places have cut against the grain, but Canada is a fascinating –  it was very interesting, when I was 13 and a half years old, something hit me. I was possessed, and I wrote a book on the history of Canada, and that’s a 205 pages on the chocolate side of Sacramento, California. Never set foot in Canada. I don’t know what it was about. 

You know what it was? My father went to Ottawa, and when he came back, he told all of us, including my blessed mothers, Irene and Cliff, who I’ll never be without even being Jr, he said, in Ottawa, I was treated with real dignity as a black man. He came from the Jim Crow South. Now I want Canada. People don’t talk about that at all in the United States. What’s going on up there in Canada? 

Now, you know, Canada got lies it tells about itself, you gotta be suspicious of, but that was his experience. This is in the 1950s and 60s. It hit me, so I said, I gotta do research on Canada. And I’ve always been a writer, so I wrote about 200 pages. I was probably just copying that encyclopedia. It’s not like I had created research skills at 13, but I’ve always been fascinated with Canada, in that sense, very much. CP McPherson, one of the great political theorists, means very much to me. And Northrop Frye, who’s the greatest literary critic of all of North America, Canadian physical priest or university Toronto, for over 42 years, he’s always meant very much to me. So there is a connection that I’ve always felt in Canada. 

Okay, we have time for one last question from the lady over there in the back.

Q: Hello. My name is Karina Robertson. I am a business reporter and capital markets reporter for the market online. And I wish I had the Kendrick Lamar Drake question. (Laughter) The question is kind of basic, and it’s just about the – a few times today you’ve spoken about courage over complacency and raising our voices. And as Canadians, I find that generally, the complacency is part of our nature, out of kindness, and we’ve had to change that. We’ve seen a shift in that as of late, what I’m wanting to understand, I mean, all the information is great, but on a very basic level, how do we stand our ground, raise our voices when we see the things that we need to speak out, when we get that inkling that something’s not right here, but we stay silent. 

And, you know, maybe it’s just complacency, maybe it’s just our community and kindness our nature, but I believe that has to change for things too, at this point in our kind of society and culture and what’s coming,

CW: I appreciate that question. Well, one thing is, we never want to associate kindness with silence. Kindness is a species of courage. Scripture says God asked the Israelites to do what? do justly, walk kindly and then walk humbly. 

That’s a courageous act. 

Kindness is something that is not just active, but you gotta cut against the grain to be kind in this unkind world. 

Silence is something else. Silence has its place, back to the strategic there are certain times where silence is the best strategy, just like when you stand in front of the coffin of your mama at her funeral, it’s not just tears, but it’s silence. So we have to always understand ways in which these different things play different roles and functions in different contexts. 

But when you’re –  you know what’s true and you refuse to say it, that’s cowardliness. I would really want to talk about cowardliness. 

You’re just scared. That’s why you’re silent. Let’s accent the cowardliness, rather than just the silence, in that particular context. And Canada has a rich tradition of those who muster the courage to be kind, muster the courage to also raise their voices. 

Now I would want to juxtapose courage, not to what was so much with complacency and you tell me what you think, but with conformity. 

That’s a different thing. That’s a different thing. 

Conformity is choosing to be well adjusted to injustice, choosing to be well adapted to indifference. That’s conformity. And usually in professional settings, people come in to fit in. How come they want the light going? They want to get promoted, they want to move to the top of the hierarchy so they’re not going to raise their voices in such a way that will get them in trouble and marginalize them, and if that would have been the way to being in the world, there’d be hardly any freedom struggles at all for anybody, no matter what color, class, sexual orientation, gender, whatever you have to have courage to be non conformist, be non conforming.

Now, one of the fundamental differences, of course, between Canada as a European settler society be some indigenous people. And the United States is a European settler society. 

Beats of the indigenous people with the genocidal effect that flows back is what we had – a revolution. 

Canada didn’t have one, you see. So America has this revolutionary tradition that has transmogrified into counterrevolution. 

You’re gonna see this July 4, just a few weeks from now, they’re gonna go back to a revolutionary tradition. Trump’s gonna have his military parade with his name and all the $45 million they’re spending on June 14 to justify his counter revolution. 

And so any tradition can be used, deployed, truncated in such a way that it flattens out the best of it. Canada didn’t have a revolutionary tradition where it really overthrew the British Empire, unless I missed it. Somehow, they negotiated, worked it through Commonwealth status. That’s a very different kind of something. 

What was negative about it is it could produce cultural conformity and complacency, but you could be complacent and still unkind. You could be conformist and still unkind. I’ll never forget, when you look at the role of violence in the formation of the United States vis a vis Canada, that Canada has roughly the same number of people as California. 

More Californians killed each other with knives than Canadians killed each other with anything – that’s how violent US culture is. 

Everyday life is, the most violent slave experience, the most violent working class movement. Rockefeller had a private army that was twice the size of the state of Ohio when they crushed workers in the railroad strike, violent domestic violence, ugly violence against gays and lesbians and trans. 

What is it about America where its everyday life is shot through with such unbelievable violence? 

Melville? What you got to say? Well, I’ve written a novel called Moby Dick. I can tell you why it’s so. 

These folk are ruthless. 

These folk are deracinated. 

These folk have a very little sense of tradition and community. 

They don’t know how to come to terms with their anger and their rage, and they take it out on each other. 

That’s one. That’s just kind of literary, an experiment, that great classic of the year 1851, but the same would be true in terms of Huckleberry Finn, on and on and on in terms of the fundamental role of everyday violence, and I think that does separate US life from Canadian life owing to the formation. Now that’s a positive thing about Canada, even though there’s no revolutionary tradition. And is it true that everyday life in Canada has less violence than everyday life United States? Correct me if I’m wrong. Now y’all may I stand corrected. 

But I sense something very, very different, very, very different. 

I just hope and pray that as US Empire continues to implode and I’m doing what we can to transform in the positive direction that we’re cutting radically, radically against the grain right now. That’s where we always are. 

But I just hope that Canada will be able to preserve the best of what it has to offer the world, which is the same for every country, which is integrity, honesty, decency, compassion, get beyond the ego, creating, community, dealing with poverty, dealing with any form that would dehumanize any human being, no matter who we are, no matter what religion and so forth. And that’s a challenge of every nation. Just you all have a border with us, and that makes it very very very tough. 

But we shall keep going,  we gotta keep smiles on our faces. Let’s leave it there. We’ve gone over time already. Thank you very much.