Cornel West is a philanthropist, political activist, actor, and author. His most notable works are 'Race Matters' published in 1993, and 'Democracy Matters' published in 2004. West has been a public critic on many social issues and matters dealing with race, politics, and democratic socialism.
Currently, West is a third party candidate in the 2024 presidential election. After declaring his run with the People's Party in June 2023, he shortly soon after switched to the Green Party. In October 2023, he announced he was again switching his affiliation, and is running as an independent candidate.
Forbes reporter Zach Everson speaks to Assistant Managing Editor Ali Jackson-Jolley about his report on presidential candidate Cornel West's finances.
Currently, West is a third party candidate in the 2024 presidential election. After declaring his run with the People's Party in June 2023, he shortly soon after switched to the Green Party. In October 2023, he announced he was again switching his affiliation, and is running as an independent candidate.
Forbes reporter Zach Everson speaks to Assistant Managing Editor Ali Jackson-Jolley about his report on presidential candidate Cornel West's finances.
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00:00 Cornell West has been a fixture of American society for more than three decades.
00:04 Ubiquity provided liquidity and West earned an estimated $15 million or so over the last
00:10 30 years.
00:11 But oddly, as he mounts an independent run for president, his net worth resembles that
00:15 of a first-year adjunct professor.
00:18 Hi, I'm Allie Jackson Jolly.
00:22 I'm here with my colleague, Forbes staff writer, Zach Everson.
00:27 Zach, thanks for being here with us.
00:29 My pleasure.
00:30 Yeah, so you and your team regularly write about the presidential candidates digging
00:37 into their wealth.
00:38 How much money do they have?
00:40 What are their assets?
00:42 And so most recently, you did that for Cornell West.
00:46 Cornell West, political philosopher, most famous for his essays written in 1991, I believe,
00:55 called Race Matters.
00:58 Before I ask you how much he's worth, tell us a little bit about Cornell West.
01:03 What should we know about him?
01:05 Really impressive backstory.
01:06 He came up from pretty humble means.
01:08 Grew up in Sacramento.
01:10 Mom was a schoolteacher and then principal.
01:12 Dad was a contractor.
01:14 One of four kids.
01:16 If his autobiography is to be believed, and there's every indication it should be, very
01:22 smart from a young age.
01:23 Just tore through academics.
01:25 Very good athlete.
01:26 He was active in track, he said.
01:27 Played the violin.
01:30 Very active on the dating and dancing scene.
01:31 He would talk about what a dancer he was.
01:34 Went to Harvard at the age of 17.
01:37 Graduated in three years, in part because he was afraid he was going to run out of money
01:41 to pay for it.
01:43 And then he went to Princeton on a full scholarship, got his PhD.
01:47 But even before he graduated Princeton, he was publishing, he was teaching at other colleges.
01:53 And just one of the modern America's foremost thinkers.
01:59 Public intellectuals.
02:00 We're not a country that really has a lot of public intellectuals, but he is certainly
02:03 one of them.
02:04 He's crossed into the mainstream.
02:06 You recognize him.
02:07 He's got a very distinct look.
02:08 He wears the same outfit every day.
02:09 He's been in the Matrix sequels where they created parts specifically for him.
02:15 And now running for president.
02:16 Yeah, so okay.
02:19 So what is he worth?
02:20 And what are his assets?
02:22 Sure, he is worth about nothing is our estimate.
02:25 He has two assets, the best that we can tell.
02:28 He owns part of a home in Princeton, New Jersey that he co-owns with the university there.
02:33 And that's worth a little bit over $200,000.
02:36 And then he also has a retirement fund that's worth over $200,000 as well.
02:41 But he owes a little bit less than that in tax liens to the U.S. government, which wipes
02:46 out whatever holdings he has right there.
02:48 Okay.
02:49 So he's a writer, author, scholar, professor.
02:55 That doesn't necessarily say to me that he earned a lot of wealth.
02:59 But did he at one point?
03:01 With a name like Cornel West, yeah.
03:03 He's done very well for himself.
03:04 We estimate that he's made about $15 million over the past 30 years.
03:08 Seems to be pretty steady at around about a half million dollars a year.
03:12 And we have some really good information on this from some divorce filings from his third
03:17 marriage where his wife really broke down what his earnings were and actually got a
03:21 list of payments that he received from his speaking agency.
03:25 So we can see that he made several hundred thousand dollars a year in speaking fees.
03:30 And recently he said he's also -- he told us that he's made a decent chunk of money
03:34 on MasterClass.
03:35 So he's done pretty well there.
03:37 So his university salaries have been anywhere from about $115,000 to I think $230,000 is
03:41 what we've been able to track down.
03:43 But the speaking fees have added to that.
03:46 And we didn't have information on books so we left that out.
03:48 But clearly he's got other things going on.
03:50 He's released a CD.
03:52 He's written numerous books.
03:53 There's more to it than that.
03:54 So I think the $15 million is probably conservative.
03:58 So then -- but you just told me he's not worth anything.
04:03 So how did he -- walk me through this.
04:05 How did he lose his money?
04:09 Two main issues that we can see is he's been married five times and there have been some
04:13 divorce settlements there that have not been super favorable for him.
04:17 And tax liens.
04:18 When he gets paid from the university, they withhold salaries like any other employer
04:22 will do.
04:24 But he did not have the taxes withheld from his speeches, he said.
04:29 And this also comes out in the divorce filings.
04:31 So when the tax bill came, he would owe hundreds of thousands of dollars and he did not have
04:36 the savings to pay that.
04:38 And those would just build up year after year after year.
04:41 He referred to it as a reptile biting its own tail and he would pace him off and more
04:46 would still come in.
04:48 So that has been the major problem there.
04:50 So we knew this.
04:51 He was up front with it in his biography.
04:53 He says I'm not good with money.
04:56 And also at that time I think he had been married three times.
04:58 Yes, I go through relationships a lot.
05:01 But we didn't know where the money was going.
05:03 Why doesn't he have the money to pay these taxes?
05:06 Where is it?
05:07 Why doesn't he have it pulled aside to pay when tax day comes along?
05:10 And we got a bit of an answer here with the divorce filings.
05:15 It was about 126 pages.
05:17 And his third wife lays out in a lot of detail affairs that he had had, children that he
05:24 had had, and spending money on travel, on maintaining a separate apartment that he was
05:30 paying $5,000 a month for to carry on extramarital relationships.
05:36 He was off living in New Mexico with a woman who, he was married at the time, but he was
05:41 living in New Mexico with another woman and their child.
05:45 And then there were pretty significant divorce payments that he ended up making in alimony.
05:51 So in your reporting you do talk a lot about how his divorces cost him, how his affairs
05:58 cost him, how these romantic entanglements that seem to be sort of serial.
06:05 And at one point you mentioned that he impregnated and abandoned one of the women.
06:14 These aren't necessarily helpful narratives.
06:16 You know, there are of course stereotypes that black men face.
06:21 And so, you know, talk to me about your thought process when you put this into your reporting.
06:27 Well there's the general, when somebody's running for president, character matters.
06:30 And that's just, but those weren't new.
06:33 It was well known that he'd gone through all these relationships, but we're Forbes.
06:37 We report on money.
06:39 And that's what mattered was that these relationships told you what was going on with his money.
06:43 You know, he had his first divorce and it told us there what he ended up having to pay
06:48 and what he got to keep.
06:49 I mean, what he got to keep was he took, it specifically said like he got to keep the
06:52 albums, the stereo, and a couple of chairs and how much money he was paying and also
06:57 what percentage of his future earnings.
06:59 So that's why we mentioned, okay, he, and he had a child there that he left.
07:04 And then later on when that child was an adult, though, we also dug into how he said in his
07:07 later divorce filing, how he was supporting him.
07:10 So we covered that.
07:11 The same thing with the extramarital affairs.
07:14 You know, the fact that he had that apartment, aside from where he was living at the Four
07:19 Seasons with his wife, mattered because that's $5,000 a month that he's spending on this.
07:24 And also that, you know, he took this woman to Turkey.
07:27 Well, there's money being spent right there.
07:30 And that's really mattered.
07:31 There was a lot more in those divorce filings, but it didn't have any money aspect to it.
07:36 So we didn't put it in there.
07:37 I mean, it's public.
07:39 You can pull these up.
07:40 These documents have been around for 30 years.
07:42 No one's reported them before, though, for whatever reason.
07:46 So it's out there.
07:47 And yeah, you know, sometimes there is this stereotype, but I mean, these are the facts
07:52 of the story.
07:54 And we were very careful with choosing what to report, what to put out there.
07:58 And it tells the story of why this guy has no money.
08:01 And a lot of it is because he spent it.
08:03 And he says as much.
08:04 I mean, he says in his autobiography, like, "I spent it on women."
08:09 And you know, okay, great, you said that.
08:10 But how specifically did you do that?
08:12 And now we have more of that answer.
08:13 Yeah.
08:14 And so you've said a couple of times, and even right now, he said it himself.
08:19 So, you know, arguably one of the smartest or smarter political philosophers in my lifetime,
08:29 he had to know, he said this stuff, he's written about it, it's been public.
08:36 When you run for president, these things come out.
08:40 And yet, like, what occurs to me is that he spent his life writing about the interplay
08:45 of race, class, gender, and power.
08:49 So I wonder, is his life playing out in front of everyone, you know, talking about his irresponsibility,
09:02 he's not really understanding some of the tax code, some of the finance, you know, how
09:08 to manage finance, not coming from generational wealth.
09:13 Do you get the sense that maybe he is wanting this to be in the public on purpose, because
09:22 it's what he's always thought about and what he's always talked about?
09:25 Yeah, he stopped talking to us once we started asking specific questions about the divorce
09:29 filings.
09:30 He was very good at responding to us earlier.
09:32 We did two interviews, Jemima Denim, who I co-wrote the author with, spoke with him twice
09:35 for like over 40 minutes.
09:37 He had a fairly firm grasp in there of where his money was, why he didn't have it.
09:43 If he wasn't aware that he needed to withhold money for federal taxes, he certainly learned
09:47 it the first year that hit.
09:49 I mean, when you get that tax bill, it's like, oh yeah, okay, maybe I should start doing
09:52 that.
09:53 And now this has gone on for decades.
09:56 You know, it's a common issue that we have not just with him, but with a lot of other
09:59 people, like if they have this baggage in their closet and then they run for office,
10:02 like were they not expecting this to come out?
10:04 But sometimes it doesn't.
10:06 I mean, look, George Santos got elected and it wasn't until after he got elected that
10:10 like, oh yeah, wow, there's a lot going on here.
10:12 And it's also, as I said, these documents have been around forever, but hadn't been
10:16 reported before.
10:17 You know, it wasn't until we asked for them that they really, you know, this public information
10:21 became truly accessible to the public.
10:24 So I don't know, speculation, but if these information hasn't come public previously,
10:31 why would it come out now?
10:32 Like he's been a public figure for quite some time, just not necessarily vetted in this
10:37 way.
10:38 And like I said, you know, the reason that the money, you know, that he did say, yeah,
10:42 he wasn't good with money.
10:43 And so what we did now is kind of explain why, you know, what's, what's he said he spent
10:47 it on?
10:48 Okay.
10:49 What specifically did you do it on?
10:50 Like, was he, and there were other things that we mentioned in the article beyond affairs,
10:53 like he had a condo at the Four Seasons, he had a Mercedes and he had a Cadillac at the
10:58 same time.
10:59 You know, he mentioned that he and his wife liked to, they would go to galas, they would
11:03 go out to nice restaurants.
11:04 I mean, he even said like the condo at the Four Seasons in hindsight, we probably couldn't
11:08 have afforded.
11:09 But, you know, being able to provide that, that background on this, this very important
11:15 person I think really matters.
11:17 And as for whether he's living, you know, what he talks about, you know, in Race Matters,
11:23 which I read while reporting this article, there are a couple of things.
11:27 One is that he does talk about the importance of maintaining strong families in the black
11:31 community.
11:33 And here you've got a guy who's been divorced multiple times, you know, has one child out
11:38 of wedlock, another child he divorced the mom when she was three.
11:41 And he said in his autobiography it was because like he just didn't have a lifestyle that
11:45 could accommodate that.
11:47 And then you also have him talking about the need to tax the wealthy and the 1% or whatever.
11:53 I mean, he's up there based on income.
11:55 You know, he's pulling in over $500,000 a year.
11:58 This is somebody who by his own definition should be taxed at even a higher rate than
12:03 what he's being taxed at currently.
12:05 And you know, instead he's dealing with tax liens going back years.
12:08 We're almost out of time.
12:10 But I wanted to ask you one more thing.
12:12 There's an interesting line in your article where you say, you know, his latest act of
12:19 financial recklessness is running for president.
12:23 Can you explain what you mean by that?
12:24 Yeah.
12:25 I mean, the big one is he is on sabbatical.
12:28 He's taking a sabbatical to run, but the sabbatical will run out, will end sometime before the
12:33 campaign will.
12:35 So he'll be without a salary.
12:36 I mean, here's somebody who is in debt, tax liens, and is now going to find himself jobless
12:42 as he runs for president, which he's not going to win.
12:45 You know, he's not going to get that $400,000 a year salary as president.
12:49 And yeah, I mean, that's not, you always, you kind of wonder, and that's one of the
12:53 things I saw after we posted this article, is like, is he doing this for the money?
12:58 And I mean, the answer here is clearly no.
12:59 I mean, he says he doesn't expect to get any more book sales out of this.
13:03 We at Forbes have dug into the finances of every other candidate running for president.
13:07 I did the one on Marianne Williamson.
13:09 So we looked at her book sales.
13:10 She didn't enjoy much of a spike in book sales.
13:14 You know, it's not, running for president is not a great way for these people to sell
13:18 books.
13:19 So the mere fact that he's like, he's in debt, he's giving up his job to go run for
13:24 president is, yeah, I mean, it's a little bit reckless there.
13:26 It's not like he has the savings to go back on to support him.
13:29 We've seen that he doesn't.
13:30 - Well, thank you.
13:31 It's fascinating reporting you did.
13:33 Thank you for being here with us.
13:35 And I can't wait to see what you uncover next.
13:39 - My pleasure.
13:40 Thanks, Allie.
13:40 - Thank you.
13:40 - Thank you.
13:41 - Thank you.
13:41 - Thank you.
13:42 - Thank you.
13:42 - Thank you.
13:43 - Thank you.
13:43 - Thank you.
13:44 - Thank you.
13:44 - Thank you.
13:45 - Thank you.
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