Interview: The Professors

March 13, 2006, 9:09 a.m.

The Professors
David Horowitz writes up the faculty.
A Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez

Ward Churchill, Cornel West...we all know the names of some of the radical professors in academia today. But in his new book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, truth-teller David Horowitz paints a portrait of some of higher-ed's worst. With 101, you might want to check and see if your kid's professor is among them.

Horowitz recently talked to National Review Online Editor Kathryn Lopez about The Professors.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Can 101 professors actually be "dangerous"?

David Horowitz: Well, as I argue in my book, this is the tip of an iceberg that probably includes between 30,000 and 60,000 faculty activists whose agendas are political and radical.

Lopez: On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the worst, where does Ward Churchill rank among The Professors?

Horowitz: Again, as I argue in my book, there are thousands of Ward Churchills on American faculties, and my guess, without poring over my text, is that roughly a quarter of the professors profiled in my book would have views as extreme as Churchill's. Churchill regards the Islamic terrorists as freedom fighters and is rooting for them to win. But then Professor Hamid Algar is an ardent follower of the Ayatollah Khomeni and gave a speech in Tehran memorializing Khomeni before 9/11 in which he called for armed jihad against the West and the elimination of Israel from the face of the earth.

Lopez: Susan Rosenberg trumps any mere terrorist sympathizer; what was Hamilton College thinking?

Horowitz: I tell the tale of convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg and her invitation to be a visiting professor at Hamilton. The invitation was extended by Professor Nancy Rabinowitz, whose family circle includes convicted terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was part of the same WeatherUndeground network as Rosenberg. Ward Churchill claims to have trained WeatherUnderground members in the use of explosives. So it's not surprising that he was also invited by Rabinowitz to Hamilton that winter.

Lopez: Who should be a household name but isn't?

Horowitz: Professors Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, leaders of the WeatherUnderground; convicted torturer and inventor of Kwanzaa, Professor Malauna Karenga; and oh so many others.

Lopez: What's your goal in naming names?

Horowitz: I don't "name names," as I am accused of doing by my leftwing antagonists, nor is The
Professors a "list." It is a 450-page book and 112,000-word text. More than 100 professors are profiled not by way of identifying 101 individuals but by way of providing a collective profile of a radical cohort on university faculties that has corrupted higher education from coast to coast.

Lopez: How many times a week are you called a McCarthyite?

Horowitz: There appear to be more than 100,000 web references that would fit that description. The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has fallen into the hands of a leftist editor, ran a cover feature about Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer, and me called "Worse Than McCarthy." The piece was written by well-known Communist apologist Professor Ellen Schrecker who has recently become an apologist for Islamic terrorists like Sami al-Arian as well.
I've posted as many attacks on the book, along with my responses, reviews, and other articles at www.dangprofs.com

Lopez: Seriously, do you think that you're unfair to anyone in the book? Folks who — like, say, a Thernstrom — have clear political biases, write for the Wall Street Journal and National Review, but are still fine teachers? Do you know all the professors you name are dangerous inside the classroom?

Horowitz: The dangerous idea is a marketing strategy which my publisher attached to the book after it was written. The only appearance of the word "dangerous" in the text is in the coupling of the words "dangerous sophistry" to describe some writing by Professor Juan Cole. Nonetheless, I think "dangerous" can fairly be applied to the collectivity, not least in terms of what they have done to the academic enterprise. Readers of the book will see that the profiles are both accurate and fair. There are several professors — Michael Berube, Todd Gitlin, and Victor Navasky to name four — who are there because they have been collusive in the efforts of political activists to purge the university of conservatives and subvert its academic mission in the service of radical agendas. I point out that Berube and Gitlin supported the war against the Taliban; and that they have been critical of the pro-Saddam left in the anti-Iraq war movement. But if they have been critical of the terrorists, Communists, and leftwing racists on university faculties, I missed it.

Lopez: Have you made any retractions since your book has been out?

Horowitz: Not one. The intellectual left has been conducting a vicious smear campaign against me alleging that my work is rife with inaccuracies ever since I launched my academic freedom movement. This is typical leftist strategy to destroy my credibility as a writer and thereby avoid having to deal with the evidence. Of course I have made serious charges against the Left, in particular that it has blacklisted conservatives in the academy and politicized its educational mission.
Anyone looking at the claims and my responses will see that these charges have no more substance than previous leftist lies that I am a racist or a homophobe (how they missed "sexist" is a puzzle to me). It is true that Professor Emma Perez — a Churchill groupie at the University of Colorado — is mistakenly referred to once as Elizabeth Perez, that Todd Gitlin's article "Varieties of Patriotic Experience" is mis-referred to as "Varieties of Patriotism" and that Victor Navasky did not contribute money to The Columbia Journalism Review, which he does edit as his profile claims. But these are the kinds of errors you will find in every 112,000 word text. And they pale in comparison to the calculated — because repeated — lies about my work made by Michael Berube and other leftist academics. The American Historical Association passed a resolution condemning my Academic Bill of Rights that was based on such a falsification of what the bill says that I offered a $10,000 reward to any member of the AHA who could identify a single sentence in its text that might justify such a claim. There have been no takers.

Lopez: You describe "the current academic culture" as "bitterly intolerant." Isn't there something going on in the inside by way of backlash? I'm thinking of Robbie George's James Madison program at Princeton — they seem to have some conservatives thriving, despite, say, Peter Singer's presence on campus.

Horowitz: As faculties go, Robby George's program is virtually unique. What is amazing and greatly encouraging is the vigor of an emerging conservative student movement on campuses across the country.

Lopez: Are you surprised the market hasn't worked things out at all in professorland? People just stop sending their kids and their money to some of the most intolerant schools?
Horowitz: As my book shows, the idea that there are tolerant schools — by which I take it you mean intellectually diverse — is a delusion. Among the top 100 there are no such schools. The best a parent could do would be to send their child to Kenyon, where the faculty is still ninety percent Left (the norm) but the curriculum is traditional and probably quite decent. There is no market. This is because the academic professions are organized nationally, and therefore no school that wants to be competitive educationally is safe. The analogy would be, say, newspapers. Even such conservatively owned papers as the Wall Street Journal and the San Diego Union are liberal in their news and features sections because the journalistic profession — trained in journalism schools at Columbia and elsewhere run by Marxists — is left.

Lopez: Post-Larry Summers, do you have any hope for Harvard?

Horowitz: No.

Lopez: Who would have been 102?

Horowitz: Actually my book has 104 if you count Churchill, Cornel West, Susan Rosenberg and
Nancy Rabinowitz. None of these has a formal profile so I counted them as one.

Lopez: Is Noam Chomsky overrated? (Not in your book — everywhere else.)
Horowitz: Chomsky is a deranged crank. So if you consider him the foremost living intellectual, yes.

Lopez: When did you first notice the "intolerance" of academia?

Horowitz: "Intolerance" is a pretty mild word for what's happened to entire departments that have been transformed into political parties that would give the Communist Party a run for its radical money. It was probably in 1992, when I invited myself onto a panel at a conference at the University of Michigan called "The PC Frame-Up" which was funded by 14 academic departments at the school.

Lopez: What, ideally, is the job of a professor?

Horowitz: As a teacher, to open students minds, to teach them how to think for themselves; as a researcher, to pursue knowledge in a disinterested fashion.

Lopez: Who are some of your ideal professors and why?

Horowitz: My great teachers were Moses Hadas and Andrew Chiappe, who were professors at Columbia in the '50s, when I attended, and Peter Boodberg, with whom I studied classical Chinese at Berkeley. They are all gone now. Their erudition was immense and their dedication absolute. In all my college years I never heard a single professor on a single occasion express a political or ideological point of view.

Lopez: What most distresses you about college kids you meet today?

Horowitz: I actually think the kids are in the main terrific. It's their professors who are the problem.

Lopez: What most impresses you about college kids you meet today?

Horowitz: I have found thoughtful students on both sides of the political debate. But I am especially impressed by the moral toughness and intellectual sophistication of our conservative students.

ABOR: The Pathetic Case Against the Academic Bill of Rights

By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com
March 13, 2006

Aaron Barlow is an untenured academic at Kutztown university, which is part of the state university system in Pennsylvania where hearings on the state of academic freedom are being held by a legislative committee created for that purpose. The inspiration for the creation of the committee came from the Academic Bill of Rights and the academic freedom campaign. Barlow has written a critique of the hearings, the bill and the campaign on TPM Cafe which is useful in showing how vapid and intellectually dishonest the opposition to the academic freedom campaign generally is. Barlow's critique is written as a commentary on my blog about misrepresentations of the Academic Bill of Rights by Eckerd University president Donald Eastman. My replies to Barlow are in caps.
David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights: Restriction or Freedom? By Aaron Barlow Is it possible to promote academic freedom by forcing professors to present divergent viewpoint’s or is that itself an abridgement of academic freedom? On his blog David Horowitz responds to criticism of his Academic Bill of Rights: “Anyone who bothers to read the Academic Bill of Rights, let alone anything the author has written about it, would know that it is designed to remove politics from the academic curriculum into which it has been inserted by the radicals who oppose the bill. The very first tenet of the Academic Bill of Rights, as I have been forced to repeat to the hard of reading innumerable times forbids the hiring or firing of faculty for political reasons. Yet here is yet another article, this time by the aforesaid President [Donald R. Eastman III, the president of Eckerd College] writing in the /St. Petersburg Times/ called “Leave Politics Out of Faculty Hiring Choices" asserting that black is white and up is down and I am the one attempting to insert the politics and the tenured politicians who have blacklisted conservatives for the last 25 years are academic innocents who have not.”

What Horowitz’s ingenuity artfully leaves out is that the very attempt to enforce his Academic Bill of Rights through a political process makes Eastman’s point.

NO IT DOESN’T. EASTMAN SAYS THAT MY BILL WOULD INTRUDE POLITICS INTO THE HIRING PROCESS. IN FACT IT WOULD FORBID THE INTRUSION OF POLITICS INTO THE HIRING PROCESS.

Academic freedom is a freedom /from/ scrutiny over political belief.

YES AND NO. BARLOW SHOULD READ THE ACADEMIC FREEDOM STATEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS WHICH BAR PROFESSORS FROM INDOCTRINATING STUDENTS (WITH THEIR POLITICAL AGENDAS) AND EVEN FROM INTRODUCING INTO THEIR CLASSROOMS CONTROVERSIAL MATTER WHICH IS IRRELEVANT TO THE SUBJECT. (ACTUALLY HE ALREADY HAS BECAUSE THEY ARE INCORPORATED INTO THE PREAMBLE OF THE ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS.) THIS KIND OF SOPHISTRY ABOUT WHAT ACADEMIC FREEDOM ACTUALLY ENTAILS IS THE MOST COMMON DEFENSE OF THE STATUS QUO PUT UP BY OPPONENTS OF THE ACADEMIC FEEDOM CAMPAIGN. WHAT THEY ARE DEFENDING IS THE BLATANT POLITICAL PROPAGANDIZING THAT TAKES PLACE IN MANY OF TODAY’S CLASSROOMS AND WHICH WE HAVE DOCUMENTED AD NAUSEAM.

Horowitz wants to change that and, in so doing, would destroy it. He would make political scrutiny an active part of his own version of academic freedom. That is, to attain balance, he would insist that all professors be judged on a political scale and that university hiring, etc. be used to keep a spectrum of views on the faculty.

EVERY SENTENCE ABOVE IS FALSE. I WANT TO ENFORCE EXISTING STANDARDS NOT CHANGE THEM. THERE IS NO PROVISION FOR POLITICAL SCRUTINY IN MY BILL. I HAVE NEVER CALLED FOR “BALANCE.” I HAVE NEVER CALLED FOR PROFESSORS TO BE JUDGED ON A POLITICAL SCALE AND I EXPLICITLY OPPOSE POLITICAL HIRING.

Therefore, his own methods undermine his so-called end. His whole point is to insert a conservative element into academia, whether that element is qualified or not. In no way will that help bring about
academic freedom.

BARLOW HAS SIMPLY INVENTED THIS CLAIM. MY ACADEMIC BILL OF RIGHTS IS EXPLICIT IN SAYING THAT PROFESSORS SHOULD ONLY BE HIRED ON THEIR ACADEMIC MERITS AND NOT THEIR POLITICAL VIEWS.

His use of the word “blacklisted” in response to Eastman also shows the extremely political nature of his jihad. He cannot show a blacklist against conservatives, nor does he have any example of anyone who can reasonably demonstrate that they were kept out of academia through such
a blacklist. Yet he throws the word around as if it were something “everybody knows.” In fact, the reasons that there are more liberals in academia, as I have written elsewhere have nothing to do with a blacklist but have everything to do with the nature of the beast. Academia is essentially humanist at its base and so, as liberalism and humanism fit together quite easily, it’s no
surprise that most professors are politically liberal no more so than business people being conservative for other cultural reasons.

I HAVE DEALT WITH THIS FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT AT LENGTH IN MY BOOK THE PROFESSORS. I JUST SPOKE AT THE WESTERN NEW ENGLAND COLLEGE OF LAW. THERE ARE THIRTY-EIGHT LAW PROFESSORS ON ITS FACULTY AND NOT A SINGLE LIBERTARIAN OR CONSERVATIVE. ARE THERE NO CONSERVATIVE LAWYERS IN SPRINGFIELD MASSACHUSSETS WHO WOULD LIKE A JOB AS LAW PROFESSOR, WHERE THEY WOULD MAKE OVER $100,000 A YEAR, FOR SIX HOURS A WEEK WORK, WITH A FOUR MONTHS PAID VACATION AND A LIFE-TIME JOB GUARANTEE AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO PRACTICE LAW AS WELL?

Horowitz is imagining a blacklist because he wants to change academia, to rid it of that humanist base and to create something else --not a place of exploration, but a place of transferal (as if knowledge is a thing and not also a process). His Academic Bill of Rights, at first glance, seems to deny this (a rather devious placement, designed so that Horowitz can use those passages to try to rebut people like Eastman), but a reading of the whole thing gives a different picture—and it is a reading of the whole thing that Eastman has done.

MORE FANTASIES MADE UP OF WHOLE CLOTH.

Consider these points:

4. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints. Academic disciplines should welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions. 5. Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty. Faculty will not use their courses for the purpose of political, ideological, religious or anti-religious indoctrination.
Who decides what are unsettled questions?

WELL, IF THERE WAS A NON-LEFTIST VOICE ON A FACULTY YOU WOULD KNOW IF QUESTIONS WERE UNSETTLED, WOULDN’T YOU? THIS IS NOT ROCKET-SCIENCE.

Who enforces all those examples of “should”?

WHO IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF A UNIVERSITY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAINTAINING ACADEMIC STANDARDS? WHOEVER IS, THAT’S WHO.

Though couched in terms of broadening debate and exploration, these points actually narrow it. Academic Bill of Rights supporter Stephen Balch, in testimony the Select Committee of the
Pennsylvania House of Representatives in Pittsburgh on 11/9/06, said:

The legislature must expect a full accounting on progress toward these goals each time the state’s universities seek new statutory authority and renewed financial support. If a good-faith effort is being made to overcome these problems, it should leave the remedial specifics to the universities’ own decision making. If a good-faith effort isn’t made, it should urge governing boards to seek new leadership as a condition of full support. Failing even in that, it might, as a last resort, consider a full-scale organizational overhaul, to design governance systems and institutional arrangements better able to meet the obligations that go with academic freedom.
In other words, academic freedom would cease to exist if certain standards were not met.

PROFESSOR BARLOW APPARENTLY HAS TROUBLE READING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. THE CONCERN IN BALCH’S TESTIMONY IS TO ENFORCE THE UNIVERSITY’S OWN STANDARDS NOT TO IMPOSE NEW STANDARDS LET ALONE POLITICAL STANDARDS ON THE UNIVERSITY. BARLOW’S AGENDA IS THAT UNIVERSITIES SHOULD BE ENTIRELY UNACCOUNTABLE FOR ANYTHING THEY DO, EVEN IF THE SYSTEM ITSELF IS CORRUPT. SO IN BARLOW’S WORLD, IF A STATE UNIVERSITY TURNS ITSELF INTO A TEMPLE OF RACIAL HATE, TO PICK ONE POSSIBILITY, THEN THE LEGISLATURE THAT FUNDS IT SHOULD NOT EVEN ATTEMPT TO REFORM ITS GOVERNANCE TO RESTORE THE STANDARDS OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION THAT IT CLAIMS TO OBSERVE. IN OTHER WORDS, IN BARLOW’S WORLD “ACADEMIC FREEDOM” MEANS “ANYTHING GOES.”

Freedom is not freedom if it is restricted. Through its demands, Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights is a limitation of freedom absolutely -- its own words to the contrary notwithstanding.

BLATHER.

One other thing Horowitz would do is limit the range of exploration open to any one professor. In an article titled “Academic Hanky Panky” Horowitz writes:

The first point I made was that as a trained animal psychologist Barash was academically unqualified to write an academic text on the complex issues of geopolitics and in particular the social, cultural, and economic causes of war and peace. In other words, Barash’s co-authored text was not a scholarly work and should not be presented as such to students.

In other words, Barash’s work should not be judged on its own merits, but on the academic background of the author!

IN OTHER WORDS, ACCORDING TO BARLOW, : YOU GET A PHD IN BIOLOGY OR MATHEMATICS AND IT QUALIFIES YOU TO TEACH AN ACADEMIC COURSE ON WAR AND PEACE. WHY NOT JUST HIRE SOMEONE OFF THE STREET WHO HAS WRITTEN A BOOK AND GIVE HIM TENURE AND A PLACE IN THE CURRICULUM? IN FACT, THE PROBLEM I HAD WITH BARASH’S BOOK WAS NOT THAT IT WAS A TEXT IN THE COURSE BUT THAT IT WAS THE TEXT FOR THE COURSE. WHAT QUALIFIED ACADEMIC BODY BY THE WAY JUDGED BARASH’S BOOK ON ITS MERITS AND DECIDED IT WAS OK TO BE PUT IN THE CURRICULUM? THE PROFESSOR WHO ASSIGNED HIS BOOK AT BALL STATE UNIVERSITY IS A PROFESSOR OF THE SAXOPHONE.

Such reasoning doesn’t deserve much of a reply, but a quote from Edward O. Wilson’s book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is appropriate:

A balanced perspective cannot be acquired by studying disciplines in pieces but through pursuit of the consilience among them. Such unification will come hard. But I think it is inevitable. Intellectually it rings true, and it gratifies impulses that rise from the admirable side of human nature. To the extent that the gaps between the great branches of learning can be narrowed, diversity and depth of knowledge will increase. They will do so because of, not despite, the underlying cohesion achieved. The enterprise is important for yet another reason: It gives ultimate purpose to intellect. It promises that order, not chaos, lies beyond the horizon. I think it inevitable that we will accept the adventure, go there, and find out.

MORE BLATHER.

FURTHER EXPLORATIONS OF THE LEFTWING DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE PROFESSORS CAN BE FOUND AT http://www.dangprofs.com/


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