Cornel West has made enough money to owe the IRS ~$500k in unpaid taxes. He is not a man with no money.
He has an aesthetic, but the notion that he doesn't care about money can't be supported simply on the basis of him not wearing high-end suits. That is a choice, he clearly makes enough money to afford them.
He's on the board of the
Classic Learning Test (notice the types of schools that use it - Liberty University and similar). This is probably related to his defense of Ron DeSantis earlier this year - because DeSantis is making the CLT a test that Florida public universities have to accept.
I mean, I don't know how much compensation he gets from the CLT for being on the board, but promoting what appears to be a right-wing Christian project to the point of defending Ron DeSantis when it happens to benefit an organization he's on the board of doesn't fill me with confidence that financial considerations are irrelevant here. And the bit with Harlan Crow doesn't help either.
So I don't share your confidence that his ethics are unimpeachable. Perhaps if Cornel West wants to release his tax returns, which is the standard that we've held Democratic presidential candidates to, we could examine his financial interests and maybe there's nothing there. But it's not like Cornel West is Joe Biden and has been investigated to death - I can have confidence in my evaluation of Biden, it's not based on vibes. I don't really have much idea of what Cornel West's financial entanglements are.