Horror on the Left: Horowitz and Academic Freedom
April 25, 2008 on 5:18 pm | In Local, Media, National |
In watching David Horowitz’s transformation from lefty radical, confidant of Huey Newton and the son of communists, all the way to conservative Republican, I have always marveled at how deeply the hard left despises him — more so than they do most right wingers.
I suppose it’s because he is seen as a turncoat — someone who used to be one of them, but has peered through the fog and rejected heroes of the left such as Howard Zinn, whom Horowitz condemned last night as “a Stalinist fraud.”
Once Nancy Johnson country, the Northwest Corner is now solidly blue. Still, about 75 people turned out see Horowitz at the Elfers music hall at The Hotchkiss School [see photo at left]. Before he began, Horowitz worked the room, introducing himself to everyone there. I chatted briefly with him about being a community journalist — a job he professed great respect for because “you really get to know the people you cover.”
The appearance was sponsored by the Hotchkiss Republicans and Young America’s Foundation, a conservative young people’s organization Horowitz has supported for years.
Horowitz, a nationally known author and activist who appears regularly as a guest on cable news shows, has long been a champion of academic freedom and has lamented the extent to which academia has been dominated by the left, especially on college campuses, but also in settings such as Hotchkiss.
In her introduction, Natalie Boyse, a junior at the school and a member of the Hotchkiss Republicans, lionized Horowitz in a way that would probably even make the Heritage Foundation blush.
“You are an inspiration to all of us who cherish academic freedom,” Natalie said.
Rather than potificate from the ornate-looking lectern that had been set up for him, Horowitz got ahold of a wireless microphone and walked back and forth on the stage, delivering a 50-minute sermon on academic freedom, which he emphasized again and again, was not the same thing as freedom of speech.
“When was in college and graduate school I never once heard an instructor make a political statement, never tried to persuade the class of a political point,” Horowitz, 69, said to the audience, some of whom were visibly nodding their heads in approval. “They were professional teachers. Today at least 10% are political activists rather than scholars.”
Although I’m 18 years younger than Horowitz, my experiences are consistent with his. I attended a school much like Hotchkiss in the 1970s and then on to a Canadian university in the 70s and early 80s. Political statements by my teachers were rare, as were attempts to state opinion as fact.
But by the time I got to Wesleyan as a grad student in the late 80s, political pontifications by professors were more commonplace — and in literature class, no less. I’d say 20 to 30% of my instructors occasionally lectured us how on close-minded Americans were or how pervasive racism and sexism were. My literary theory prof, Jim Stone, was an avowed Marxist — although, ironically (and in between his wrongheaded political statements), he was also the best teacher I had while in Middletown.
Horowitz, who is the author of an Academic Bill of Rights, recalled the story of a student who told him his French professor at Penn State took up valuable class time with a showing of “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s scathing indictment of the U.S. healthcare system. Horowitz likened it to going “to your doctor and getting a lecture on Iraq.”
Evidently someone at Hotchkiss had told him a teacher there had likened President Bush to Hitler, causing Horowitz to go off on a another riff: “If people are allowed to use their classrooms as political soapboxes, then they’re destroying the mission of the institution.”
Another student asked him what he thought of censorship and suggested she had been warned by school officials against using a politically loaded phrase — to which Horowitz replied: “I would not like to see you censored for the use of the word Islamofacism, but it’s a private school. It doesn’t fall under the first amendment.”
One student, whom others identified as Alex, asked Horowitz a lengthy question about the Middle East. When the answer did not satisfy him, Alex asked another argumentative question and another until John Virden, the school’s assistant headmaster, attempted to shut the affair down and have the students make their queries privately with the guest speaker. But Horowitz insisted on taking a few more questions and then the event adjourned to a small reception out in the hall.
I thought the man made a very compelling case against bias in the classroom. You would think that even the left could agree with him that bringing a heavy political agenda into the classroom (be it left or right) is simply wrong. But no, many in the academy see Horowitz’s crusade as an attack on them, when in reality if they were simply doing their jobs, they would have nothing to worry about.
I must admit I had half expected some mild protests, since Horowitz has attracted his share of them in the past (and since there were already lefty protesters ready to spring into action the next day during Bush’s visit to Kent). Students have in the past tried to shout Horowitz down and prevent his voice from being heard. He’s even been the victim of a pie throwing.
But I felt proud to be at that lecture and reassured that, although I’m sure many on the Hotchkiss campus can’t stand him him, Horowitz was allowed to be heard, just as his detractors are. And there were no pies … what a country and what a school!
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Terry, I wonder if this is really a right versus left issue. (Disclosure: I am one of those lefties who were unhappy that Bush was breathing our air today).
I’ve had professors over the years whom I ultimately decided were in all parts of the political spectrum. The very best teachers were the ones who, 20 years after you took their course, you still did not know the personal politics of (sorry for the terrible sentence!). For the most part, they were able to create enough controversy that the students felt inclined to dig a little deeper into the subject.
There were also those who tried to achieve this but didn’t quite make it. Some were more successful than others. The ones who wore their hearts on their sleeves, politically speaking, tended to be the least successful.
Regarding the current administration and the activities in Kent today, I would hope that as many people on the right as on the left participated. If Bush has accomplished one thing for sure, it has been to discredit the economic theories of the conservatives — principally because his administration has mouthed conservatism while practicing self-enrichment. That’s not to mention their repression of science in the interest of payoffs, which ought to enrage the normally apolitical scientists in academe.
Horowitz would be very hard-pressed to approve the performance of this administration or to defend it. And there’s the crux of the matter — teachers and professors who recognize the current mess in Washington as something other than philosophical and speak up are branded as idealogues, when they are actually nothing more than moralists.
Comment by Geoff Brown — April 25, 2008 #
What an excellent article you have written, Mr. Cowgill! Finally, some journalistic integrity. The world of academia is truly filled with hate-filled, enraged socialists who spew forth in their classrooms frightening political agendas (Ward Churchill, Ayers, and yes, teachers at Hotckiss) . After reading the one comment on your blog from the hate-filled, enraged Mr. Brown, I am still, after hearing comments day after day after day, stunned when I hear people say things like Mr. Brown did about President Bush “breathing our air”. Wow! Elitism at its very best. I happen to be one of the rare people in this part of the country who respects President Bush a great deal as a fine person while not always agreeing his policies. He is NOT a conservative! I can’t figure out why people think he is. I guess they’re ignorant of what conservatism really is. The government under President Bush and his administration has grown tremendously. It will be even worse (which is hard to fathom) when the liberals take over. My final comment is: If Bush and all the members of Congress who voted to go to war in Iraq went to war for oil, WHERE IS IT?
Comment by Janice Kliza — April 25, 2008 #
Geoff,
I think it is a left-right issue now, in the sense that it’s the left that dominate academia at this time.
Consider the case of Univ of Illinois at Chicago’s Bill Ayers, the former SDS and Weather Underground radical, who is unrepentant about his violent past and is at the center of controversy over his association with Barack Obama.
It’s hard to believe that a guy like that with a similar right-wing past would be tolerated in the academy, but it barely makes a ripple in academic circles.
Janice,
Thanks for your comment. To be fair to Geoff, although he is a committed liberal, I really think he was joking with the “breathing our air” comment.
Actually, I think we all have something in common in recognizing the failures of the Bush administration …
Comment by Terry — April 26, 2008 #
Thanks, Terry, for your calm words. I can’t tell if people are “joking” with outlandish words such as “breathing our air” because I have been around plenty of people in this area who would mean it. Government is so powerful, at all levels, I wouldn’t be surprised if it stepped in eventually and told us who could or could not breath air in a particular air. After all, we exhale CO2 and that’s a pollutant.
But back to Mr. Horowitz. Recommended reading if you want to educate yourself on the state of academia with regard to liberal bias is Mr. Horowitz’s The Professors. Pretty scary. My motto to students at all levels “fight the brainwashing”. Cheers.
Comment by Janice Kliza — April 26, 2008 #
Janice and Terry –
I guess I should thank everyone and just accept the conciliatory remarks — and let this ride, but after thinking about it for a while I decided to reply.
First off, it wasn’t a joke. It was a figure of speech. I wasn’t an English major, so forgive me that I can’t remember whether it was synecdoche or metonymy but it was intended as one or the other. My hope is that this will clarify what I was saying.
I’ve been grappling with “elitist” — it’s an easy term to throw around and I see a lot of it nowadays. In any conventional sense of the term “elite”, it would seem that G. W. Bush is the member of the elite (Andover, Yale, Harvard, etc.), not I.
If we’re talking about an elite of merit rather than inheritance, I’m pretty sure that I do not qualify either. I’m taking a biology course at Northwestern Community College right now in which I’m getting killed in terms of grades by people who have not had my “advantages” and who we can be thankful will be taking care of us in our old age.
I think the first part of my original post, in which I lauded professors who made us think about controversial matters without tipping their own personal hands, I HOPE that I addressed the subject of liberal or conservative censorship — both anathema. You don’t learn to think by learning to parrot the professor. Ever. You may get a high grade by doing so, but that’s the tragedy of the whole thing, whether the censor is an evangelical college that simply doesn’t consider even inviting someone who doesn’t buy into their world view, or whether it is a more left wing (?) institution who condescends to invite someone to speak for the “other side”.
Regarding Janice’s depiction of me as “hate filled” and “enraged” there’s not really a lot I can say. In my life I’ve been a youthful protestor, an Army officer, a business functionary, a Republican committeeman (okay, it was in NYC), and now have settled into the role of a liberal — maybe that happened when my first Social Security check arrived. Occasionally I’ve been mad as hell, but the terms you chose are not ones that resonate with me.
I guess the most accurate term might be “disappointed”. I’ll echo you, Janice: “Fight the brainwashing.”
Cheers!!
Comment by Geoff Brown — April 26, 2008 #
Geoff Brown: Lindsay Republican
Sounds like a good title for a memoir. And you’re correct. “Figure of speech” is a more accurate depiction of the “breathing the air” comment.
Of all the lefties I know, Geoff, you are probably the least angry and the least likely to become, in the words of Obama, “bitter.” You also have a excellent sense of humor (occasional madness notwithstanding!).
Comment by Terry — April 27, 2008 #
Thanks, Terry — and “Lindsay Republican” was exactly it. Manhattan West Republican Club was indeed a Lindsay Club, but, being located on Manhattan’s West Side, there were not a whole lot of us who would take the social risk of being called Republicans and we didn’t have much clout.
Years later, I met Mayor Lindsay when I had married and moved to the East Side. He was long out of office by then. One day, leaving church, I was having a hard time getting the baby carriage containing my daughter down the steep church steps. Mayor Lindsay saw the problem I was having, came over, took the carriage on his back, and basically carried it down the steps.
And he wasn’t even running for office!
Kinder and gentler days back then, I guess!!
Comment by Geoff Brown — April 27, 2008 #