I'm not a big David Horowitz fan, but this piece makes a fair degree of sense--except the part about firing Churchill if he turns out not to be an American Indian. Definitions of who is and who isn't an Indian are too loose for that.
By David Horowitz
February 8, 2005
Editor's note: In an interview that appeared in Saturday's Rocky Mountain News, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill said "It's been announced in pretty clear terms by both David Horowitz and Newt Gingrich that I am just the kickoff for a general purge they have in mind." In the following column, Horowitz, who is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles, explains what his actual position is in the debate over whether Churchill should be fired for his inflammatory statements. It will probably come as a surprise to many people, both friend and foe alike, that I am opposed to any attempt to fire Ward Churchill for the essay (now part of a book) that has become notorious in which he denounces his own country as a genocidal empire, supports America's terrorist enemies, and says that 9/11 was a case of the "chickens coming home to roost."
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3 comments:
I am curious why you find Horowitz objectionable. So he is more the right than most. So what? Churchill is more to the left than most. And Churchill does, for better and or worse, get to put his views forward at taxpayer expense.
Keep up the blog, great stuff! :)
Jaron
Horowitz distrusts professors and wants to protect undergrads from profs with political viewpoints. In my judgment there's no getting away from having a viewpoint and the process is self-regulating: go too far in espousing a political viewpoint and students just switch off. Horowitz, though, has suggested legislation on the subject which, although perhaps well-intentioned, would either a) be unenforceable and therefore a waste of time; or b) exert a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas.
Horowitz was a 60s radical who "saw the light" in the 1980s and evidently thinks the tender intellects of undergrads must be protected from ideas he has come to reject. He made the intellectual journey to conservatism on his own, but he doesn't think people like you can be trusted to make up your own minds. That's my beef with him.
"Horowitz distrusts professors and wants to protect undergrads from profs with political viewpoints."
I don't think that is what he is saying at all. My sense (and on this point I agree with him if not in some other areas) is that he feels there there needs to be a sort of "political affirmative action" in academia. Precisely to allow students to be exposed to other than leftist ideas in school, which in some universities may just not happen otherwise. I just can't envision UC Berkely having a conservative teacher or Columbia University teaching a middle east class that portrays Israel as anything other than an obscenity. I am not saying that this happens in all classes. Indeed, one thing I just loved about the OSU military history classes, besides my interest in the topic and the privilege of learning from the best in that field, is that you got exposure to the full spectrum. But I have had sociology, english and international studies classes where the assigned reading and discussion was pretty one sided. Take a class from Prof. Quigley at the OSU law school on international law and you will only get the Palestinian perspective as one example.
" In my judgment there's no getting away from having a viewpoint and the process is self-regulating: go too far in espousing a political viewpoint and students just switch off."
For some students yes, but not for others. My sense is this backlash against an academic leftward tilt IS partly a natural reaction, the students "switching off" or revolting, against a problem. One aspect of my job is to do checks of various OSU buildings. When I go through an academic building I am fond of looking at what columns, comics and the like that people have up on their office doors. Of the things posted that deal with political issues that I see, the overwhelming majority of postings are left of center to varied degrees. Nothing wrong with that. It is fine to decorate one's door however you like. But it in my view that does show where the general political leanings lay. I don't think it would be so terrible to see that imbalance redressed.
"Horowitz, though, has suggested legislation on the subject which, although perhaps well-intentioned, would either a) be unenforceable and therefore a waste of time; or b) exert a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas."
I don't know. My sense is that there is a chilling effect currently, albeit on right of center ideas, in academia that needs redressed. Exactly how that can be done, I don't know. How do you break into a closed shop? I suppose one way would be for conservative scholars to try in overwhelming numbers to go into academia the same way leftist did a successful takeover in the 1960's and 1970's. But I am unsure of how receptive a full tenured marxist on the deciding committee would be when it comes time for a hypothetical Victor Davis Hansen to go up for tenure. My wife (who is very much a leftist) at her OSU masters oral boards was openly ridiculed by a leftie professor from the 1960's because her community activist art work apparently wasn't sufficient when compared to his heroic running away to Canada in Vietnam. In this guy's class, I am not so sure that he would present the full spectrum of ideas to his students.
"Horowitz was a 60s radical who "saw the light" in the 1980s and evidently thinks the tender intellects of undergrads must be protected from ideas he has come to reject."
I don't think that is what he means. I think he is more interested in just getting those tender intellects exposed to the ideas he now holds, which might not happen without some real structural changes at some places. I can see your point that maybe he went from a bolshevik on the left to a bolshevik on the right in approach. But even so, there is enough resistance to conservative ideas in academia that if he even gets part of what he wants it will expand the marketplace of ideas.
I am not saying that conservative ideas aren't out there in larger society, but academic ideas, where the right is badly underrepresented, carry the stamp of legitimacy in ways that larger societal views don't. When Prof. Churchill says something, because he is a professor, he gets more clout and people leap to defend his academic freedom. One wonders if it were Prof. Horowitz speaking his mind so controversially, if the AAUP would leap as readily to his defense?
"He made the intellectual journey to conservatism on his own, but he doesn't think people like you can be trusted to make up your own minds. That's my beef with him."
Despite the tone of this, I am not all that conservative in many areas. I am environmentalist, have reservations about globalization, support affirmative action, am pro-union and am quite feminist which are currently leftie views. One thing that made me turn right in other ways (especially foreign and military policy) is looking at how the left has adapted a certain moral blindness where states that speak English and Hebrew are damned at every turn, while states and regimes "of color" (to use the current jargon) that speak other languages can commit any atrocity with nary an askance comment from the western left. A column by Christopher Hitchens around the time of 9/11 kind of crystalized that sense for me, but it was a variety of sources. The more I read of ideas that I had NOT been exposed to so much at OSU as a student, the more they made sense in many ways.
Anyway, that is more than you likely wanted to hear, and sorry for the grammatical thicket, but that is my 2 cents.
Jaron :)
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