In the letter, West alleges being denied tenure partially on the basis of his support for the Palestinians and his opposition to Israel.
West had already announced in March that he was intending to leave the school after it had denied him tenure.
"How sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay," he said in the letter. "The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large."
This is my candid letter of resignation to my Harvard Dean. I try to tell the unvarnished truth about the decadence in our market-driven universities! Let us bear witness against this spiritual rot! pic.twitter.com/hCLAuNSWDu
— Cornel West (@CornelWest) July 13, 2021
"To witness a faculty enthusiastically support a candidate for tenure, then timidly defer to a rejection based on the Harvard administration's hostility to the Palestinian cause was disgusting," West said.
He also cites "the shadow of Jim Crow...expressed in the language of superficial diversity" as a factor in his decision to leave.
West was previously a tenured professor at Harvard, but left the university in 2002 after a public fight with the president at the time. He returned to the school in 2017 in a nontenured position.
West will return to teaching at the Union Theological Seminary in New York.