Lie About the Author: Look for the union libel

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 8:26 AM

A spokesgroup for unions called the International Labor Communications Association has issued a condemnation of the Academic Bill of Rights reminiscent of the 1930s and reflecting the incipient Stalinism in the general campaign against the academic freedom movement by teacher unions, the al-Jazeera website, the Saddam Hussein website uruk.net, the Nation, Counterpunch.org and similar groups.

A sample of the bald-faced inventions contained in the union press release:

"In statements reminiscent of the McCarthy era, Horowitz charges campuses are 'politically correct' and he demands the firing of what he calls 'left-wing' profesors and that colleges teach what he calls competing views. Such threats chill free speech on campuses, say the unions, and other coalition members."

Every statement in these sentences is false.

1. I have never demanded the firing of any professor for expressing leftwing views. Ever. In fact, the very first clause of the Academic Bill of Rights states in prose easily understandable to non-union members the exact opposite: "No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs."

2. The Academic Bill of Rights, as anyone who has read it knows, is strictly viewpoint neutral. It doesn't refer to "left-wing professors." It doesn't use terms like "left-wing."

3. My book, The Professors, says the exact opposite of what the union statement claims I say: "This book is not intended as a text about leftwing bias in the university and does not propose that a leftwing perspective on academic faculties is a problem in itself. Every individual, whether conservative or liberal, has a perspective and therefore a bias. Professors have every right to interpret the subjects they teach according to their individual points of view. That is the essence of academic freedom."

According to the ILCA statement "The [American Federation of Teachers] ...said the legislation 'would provide for government monitoring of curriculum, including reading materials in the classrom, to ensure that Right-Wing ideas are given more prominence, monitoring of faculty hiring to ensure more conservatives are hired and tampering with longstanding procedures' that protect college professors from 'unsubstantiated' accusations of bias."

Every claim in this statement is false.

Every statement about what the Academic Bill of Rights would require is a pure invention by the American Federation of Teachers.

There is no provision for "government monitoring of curriculum" in the Academic Bill of Rights, nor in any legislation proposed in any remote way related to the Academic Bill of Rights. All such legislation in fact is in the form of resolutions not statutes and nowhere is any provision suggested that would involve government monitoring of curricula.

Nor is there any provision for monitoring reading materials in the classroom.

Nor is there a single phrase about ensuring that "Right-Wing ideas" are given more prominence. Nor is there any provision about monitoring faculty hiring to ensure more conservatives are hired. The Academic Bill of Rights, in fact, requires the opposite: "No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs."

Nor is there any provision in any legislation that could be construed as "tampering with long-standing proceedures" of any kind.

Finally, the statement quotes the American Federation of Teachers as saying: "Students from working families 'would be negatively affected by replacing academic professionalism with political ideology."

Of course the entire academic freedom campaign is an attempt to do just the opposite: to replace the political ideology that has been introduced into college (and high school) classrooms by members of the teacher unions and other faculty with academic professionalism. Here is an excerpt from my testimony to the Appropriations Committee of the Kansas House of Representatives:

"The long-term remedy for the political corruption of our institutions of higher learning is the restoration of academic values and standards, such as the academic freedom policies of the Kansas Board of Regents. This remedy might be summed up as the restoration of academic professionalism."

The readiness of the American Federation of Teachers to present the exact opposite of the truth in order to further its political agendas is an accurate reflection of the intellectual corruption taking place in our universities through the activities of its members.

Review: The high risks of higher education

Mar 28, 2006
Review by Monique E. Stuart

David Horowitz, in his new book The Professors The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, exposes the Left’s stronghold on academia and how they use their positions of power to indoctrinate the young people, as well as to promote and protect their own [fellow professors] from the public, the administration, and any shred of accountability.

Pointing out early in the book that these problems are not limited to the 101 professors profiled in the book, Horowitz writes, “To identify 101 radical professors for this volume, it was not necessary to scour university faculties. This sample is but the tip of an academic iceberg, and it would have been no problem to provide a thousand such profiles or even ten times the number.”
Horowitz also explains that these professors, from a variety of different institutions, are at the top of their field, “Among them are individuals prominent in their institutions and at the forefront of their professions. They are the authors of books widely used as texts in their fields. They have been funded by prestigious foundations and awarded the highest professional honors in their fields. They are department chairs and directors of academic institutes and programs and heads of large professional associations.”

The book starts with a snapshot of Professor M. Shahid Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass. As Horowitz writes, “M. Shahid Alam is one of thousands of tenured academics at American universities whose intellectual guide is Marxism and who thinks that America’s terrorist enemies are really ‘freedom fighters’ and America a Great Satan…. Alam likened Mohamed Atta and al-Qaida terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11 to the American patriots who defended themselves against the British at Lexington and Concord and launched an historic movement for liberty and freedom.”

Another professor recorded in the book is Amiri Baraka, born Everett Leroy Jones, a professor at Rutgers University, Stony Brook. As Horowitz reports, anti-Semitic and racist writings are what “gained Jones a reputation as a courageously candid genius, which paved his way for an academic career.” A former poet laureate of New Jersey, in one of his poems, as reported by Horowitz, Baraka wrote, “Rape the white girls. Rape their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats.” This is who is teaching your children in the classrooms of higher education.

Professor Norman Finkelstein is an assistant professor of political science at De Paul University who “Asserts that the Holocaust has been exaggerated and exploited by Jews just to justify Israeli human rights violations and crimes against humanity.” De Paul recruited him after being “fired from two New York-area adjunct teaching jobs (New York University and Hunter College) because of his pseudo-scholarship and rantings against Jews and Israel.” In an interview with Counterpunch Magazine, Finkelstein was reported as saying, “If you understand terrorism to mean the targeting of civilian populations in order to achieve political goals, then plainly the U.S. qualifies as the main terrorist government in the world today…”

Horowitz reported in The Professors about Professor Michael Vocino of the University of Rhode Island, that “A student named Nathaniel Nelson who took Professor Vocino’s political science class, ‘Political Philosophy: Plato to Machiavelli,’ was struck by the professor’s aggressive disregard for professional standards of conduct. According to the student, Professor Vocino entered the classroom on the first day announcing, ‘My name is Michael Vocino and I like d**k.’” It was reported, he then asked the student, “Are you queer?” And, at a later time, “cognizant the student was a Christian, demanded to know why Christians ‘hate fags.’” Horowitz notes that Vocino doesn’t even qualify for the position of an assistant professor, never mind that he’s a full professor with tenure rank.

If you think these four professors are bad, just remember, there are 97 more profiled in this book which exposes higher education for what it truly is: a liberal fortress almost impossible to penetrate by anyone who is not some sort of leftist radical. No school is exempt, as is shown by the fact that he describes professors from every type of school, public and private, religious and secular, small and large.

Some schools did appear more than others, with numerous faculty members being showcased. The school with the most professors featured in this book was Columbia University with an astounding nine. A number, judging by the profiles, these radicals would be proud of. The closest schools to Columbia were the City University of New York and Georgetown University, each with four.

If your kids are heading off to college anytime soon, they should read this book before picking a school and you should read this book to see what they are up against once they get there. If you thought peer pressure was bad, imagine the threat of receiving lower grades or being verbally harassed in class on a daily basis because of your personal views. As a conservative, your kids might enjoy arguing with their professors, but if they are interested in learning, this book can help them see which schools, professors, and academic fields to avoid.