David Horowitz - The Nutty Professor

Regular readers – all six of you (and I know who you are) – will appreciate that, among the rightwingbuttnuttery that is destroying this country, we have a special place in our heart for David Horowitz and his bawdy band of extremists at FragPaganNews.com – probably somewhere close to the lump of Crisco and beef gristle that will someday shut off our circulation completely.

But to bring everyone up to speed, David has just released his newest pamphlet (a hardback edition, no less), with the endearing title, “The Professors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America”. The volume consists of brief vignettes illustrating the intellectual crimes of a few famously controversial (big surprise – Ward Churchill) and many more heretofore unrecognized anti-America hate-mongers committed to brainwashing the college-going youth of this country. Among the ironically comical notes, the volume inexplicably covers less that 101 academics, although we’re gratified to learn in the introduction that those included are only examples of the thousands more just like them.

At its core, Horowitz’s campaign is a transparently partisan effort to promote conservative indoctrination throughout the nation’s campuses under the cynical disguise of the so-called Academic Freedom movement and the Academic Bill of Rights (as though academics deserved rights – hah!). The terrifically funny and insightful Michael Bérubé offers some of our favorite running commentary on the topic, and several others have chimed in recently as well (here, here and here), highlighting that the would-be Czar of Academic Integrity is not only a pathetically deficient scholar, but considers personal slander of others a perfectly legitimate means of framing a debate – not exactly the qualities most would find exemplary as a pedagogical model.

Those lofty, intellectual issues aside, we are of two minds about Horowitz’s latest, brisk jog through the limelight. On the one hand, his genuinely unique combination of horrific speaking style, grating personality, utter lack of humor, and inability to ignore even the slightest taunt, thoroughly undermines his cause, and on that basis, we are thrilled with whatever attention he can dredge up for himself. On the other hand, to the degree that the conversation mistakenly lends credibility to the notion that Horowitz’s thesis actually merits debate, and that his slander, misrepresentation and omindirectional reasoning are anything other than efforts to supplement the $300K+ salary the author draws from donors less fortunate than himself, we are less than thrilled.

To be entirely fair, a letter Horowitz sent to readers of FragPaganNews.com in recent days isn’t a direct solicitation for salary support, it’s a plea for funds to place ads in campus papers throughout the country advertising his book (only the most cynical among us would see this as an ironic attempt at both indoctrination and personal enrichment). Of course his publishing house – Regnery - purveyor of such fine volumes as the smear campaign of the Swifties for Screwing John Kerry Out of the White House (or words to that effect) – will also earn a few shekels in the process, but that too is at best an ancillary evil. No, the real problem here is that Horowitz is a danger to the cause of academic excellence and freedom regardless of his motivations, and his own words demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt why he should be regarded as such.

To illustrate the point, here we’ve done you the favor of distilling two items distributed under Horowitz’s name, revealing for anyone who cares to pay attention, the utter hypocrisy of someone who seeks to influence higher education in his own image. It this the kind of intellectual integrity and analytic ability you want to see your own kids come away from college with, at a price tag of $100,000 plus?

Excerpted from David Horowitz’s recent donation request:

We have been given an opportunity to expose the radical left in our universities right now like we've never been able to before.

…

…right now I'm asking you to immediately help me counter their malicious attempts to smear me, the book, our research and our powerful and growing National Campaign for Academic Freedom.

We're already preparing space ads [sic?] to run in every campus newspaper that features one of the professors in my book, and in such magazines as Editor & Publisher that will call this coalition on the carpet and expose their smear campaign and their ugly McCarthyite tactics!

…Can you help me today with a special emergency Expose the Censors contribution of $300, $100, or at least $35 right now?

You know that extremist factions like People for the American Way, the ACLU and the far left United Students Association don't truly want genuine academic freedom to gain a foothold on our campuses. If they did they wouldn't accuse me of attacking faculty members for their political associations.

The introduction of The Professors addressed that criticism point-blank and states clearly that the purpose of the book isn't to condemn faculty members for their political views. It's to expose the intellectual corruption of the university and the transformation of classrooms into political soap boxes.

Along with the falsehood about attacking professors for their associations, the coalition claims that the book is my attempt to "silence my critics." As you know, that's utter nonsense. And while the professors discussed in my book don't agree with you and me or our call for real academic freedom....

...their criticisms of our campaign or my work don't amount to a hill of beans!

...it's just that those who suffer the indignity and abuse from these attacks are more often than not conservatives or Christians ... we cannot let this stand!
…

Sincerely,


David Horowitz
President & Founder

And yet, another, more public statement from the self-appointed proponent of academic honesty and integrity:

… “This book is not intended as a text about left-wing bias in the university and does not propose that this bias is necessarily a problem. 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. This is the essence of academic freedom.”

Did anyone else catch a hint of a difference between these two statements? Could it possibly be that Horowitz’s real agenda is: 1) make a boatload of money, and 2) promote the agenda of the radical right?


EDITOR'S UPDATE: No sooner was this piece posted than Horowitz 'went live' with a half-assed advertising site, cleverly disguised as, well, a half-assed advertising site for his book, including all the latest book buzz (i.e., short mentions on the 5 or 6 sites - like us - that are sickly compelled to respond to this sort of travesty). Whether or not this violates Blogger.com's fair use policy is for others to decide, but the cheap grab of free server space certainly appears unseemly, especially for an organization that manages to draw millions in donations. In any case, the best reasons to visit David's latest shot at attention are: 1) 'cause the URL is just too good (dangerousprofessors.net), and 2) to see how long it takes before they discover the spelling error in the link to David's earlier, broader smear campaign, DiscoverTheFolksThatPissedDavidOffAtSomePoint.com.

2/21/2006 UPDATE: Just when you think it can't get any better, it does. Today's edition of FragPaganNews features a funny goof David received, and true to his inability to ignore even the slightest taunt, Horowitz responds in fine form. Don't hesitate to note your impressions on the forums!

2/27/2006 UPDATE: Today's edition of FragPaganNews headlines a LONG petty piece from Horowitz complaining about a Boston Globe review of The Professors that, in fact, gives David far too much credit (before accurately noting that the book is full of shit). The snit-fit is worth a full read, however, since it closes with this little Horowitz gem; "In the end Professor Gross [the Harvard reviewer] wants the examination of the problem I have identified to be scholarly and scientific. I couldn’t agree more.” Conceding, apparently, that The Professors is neither.