Article: Author skewers U-M professors as 'marketing tool'

Laura Berman /

March 7, 2006

T hey are being touted, in a new book, as the 101 most dangerous professors in America.

Oooh, scary.

When it comes to the world of ideas, "dangerous" is a relative business. Even a sound idea can be used to justify evildoing.

Because the book ("The Professors," Regnery) is written by recovering leftist David Horowitz -- whose swing from far left to far right bespeaks a talent for extremism -- a couple of his targets are employed by a state university located in East Lansing.

Just kidding.

They actually work in Ann Arbor. Exactly where you'd expect to find them. At a state university where Tom Hayden once edited the student newspaper, the Unabomber studied mathematics, and a generation of academics schooled before the current cultural revolution still hold a certain amount of sway.

'Outing' several professors

Horowitz, who has been waging a war against political correctness for more than a decade from several platforms, is now "outing" professors. One of them, Professor Juan Cole, is a professor of Mideast studies at the university. His proficiency in Arabic, and Iraqi dialects, helped propel his visibility nationwide after the Iraq war began. He's written several well-regarded books in his field, and is widely known for his blog on Middle Eastern events.

Cole is controversial, in part, for his take on contemporary Mideastern politics: in a recent Metro Times interview, for example, he downplayed instances of Muslim violence in reaction to Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and focused instead on the offensiveness of the cartoons. (In an e-mail, he politely declined to be interviewed, saying he is teaching this semester at Rutgers University and "my time is not my own.")

Horowitz also cites Gayle Rubin, an assistant professor of anthropology at the university, who is doing research in San Francisco and not teaching in Ann Arbor this year.

'A marketing tool'

Rubin was an early radical feminist theorist who became famous as a student at Michigan. A university spokesman said she has maintained a long-term interest in various policy debates over sexual representation, censorship, sex law, sex education and sex work. State Rep. John Stewart, R-Plymouth, who heads the House subcommittee on higher education, says he's more outraged by mutterings among his colleagues about the list than he is about "an attempt to defame one of the nation's great universities."

Horowitz insists that the list of professors -- which takes up most of his book and might, itself, be considered "dangerous" as a potential blacklist -- is "a marketing tool" dreamed up by his publisher.

One of U-M's professors appears to agree. In a letter to Horowitz that's been posted on the Internet, biology Professor John Vandermeer complains that he's "at least on par with (Cole and Rubin), perhaps even more dangerous," and brags that his students call his classes "commie bio."

Alas, some ideas once considered dangerous now seem dusty and out of fashion.

You can reach Laura Berman at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.