West contends that popular coverage of the controversy obscured the true issues at stake in his dispute with Summers. West argues that Summers's vision of academia is corrosive to a deep democratic commitment that strives to connect the academy with society at large, so as to fulfill its calling to educate the public. He contends that the controversy with Summers was indicative of the fact that "a market-driven technocratic culture has infiltrated university life, with the narrow pursuit of academic trophies and the business of generating income from grants and business partnerships taking precedence over the fundamental responsibility of nurturing young minds." According to West, during the controversy he was highly regarded in the academic community, "had more academic references than fourteen of the other seventeen Harvard University Professors", and "had nearly twice as many such references as Summers himself." At the time, West had been focused on reaching wider audiences as part of his effort to encourage civic engagement—especially amongst youth—in the hope of revitalizing what he calls a deep democratic commitment that would counteract the encroaching political nihilism that he argues threatens the future of American democracy. While West does not deny the importance of academics engaging the more specialized concerns of their fields, he strongly opposes the sentiment that academia must limit itself to those rarefied interests. Academia and academics, he contends, have an important role to play in promoting public discourse that cannot be achieved if professors lock themselves in their ivory towers instead of engaging society-at-large and the salient issues of the day. Ultimately, this was the root of the quarrel, according to West.