David Horowitz's The Left in the University

American Thinker.com ^ | September 23, 2017 | Bruce Thornton

[Kaslin]

The corruption of American higher education has been in the news a lot in the last few years. “Snowflakes” and “safe spaces,” crowds of thugs shutting down conservative speakers, craven administrators caving in to demands of activist students and faculty have become increasingly common since the rise of Donald Trump sparked a “resistance” movement. Even progressives who have run afoul of campus Robespierres are writing books about free speech now that their revolutionary children have started devouring their own. What David Horowitz has been warning about in his books and speeches for more than thirty years -- the ideological hijacking of the university and the betrayal of its traditional mission -- has finally grabbed the national spotlight.

The essays in his latest book, The Left in the University, are indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how we got to this pass.

The first chapter, “The Post-Modern Academy,” is a succinct analysis of the left’s takeover of the university. He starts with one of the most publicized and representative incidents that illustrates how far our campuses have descended into preposterous political correctness and left-wing shibboleths. Ward Churchill was the University of Colorado professor who called the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks “little Eichmanns,” and whose exposure in 2005 led to a national scandal when his academic and personal frauds were revealed. What is less well-known is the enthusiasm that many universities had shown in inviting Churchill to speak at their campuses -- 40 invitations before the scandal broke -- despite his vicious anti-Americanism and shoddy scholarship. As Horowitz explains, such views were “far from obscure to his academic colleagues. They reflected views comparing America to Nazi Germany that were part of the intellectual core of his academic work.”

[Da Coyote]

“The Closing of the American Mind” by Allen Bloom nailed this decades ago.

Always remember: If you have no real abilities, you can become a liberal professor or actor and fool others with lesser abilities.

[Vaduz]

The corruption of American higher reeducation system is more like it time to flip the teachers.

[gunnyg]

edu training ground for TEW!

[IronJack]

David Horowitz is a visionary. But like so many of those tragic figures, he is largely ignored by the ones who should be listening.

[Reily]

Remember he knows these people in a very personal way.
He was editor of “Ramparts” magazine - a hard core “ New Left” magazine of the 1960s. He helped launch the “Black Panthers”. In fact it was the Black Panthers’ murder of their bookkeeper, who also did the accounting for Ramparts that helped give him an “epiphany” which launched him toward conservatism. I will never forget the magazine article he did “Lefties for Reagan”!

He was also a “Red Diaper” baby, child of hard core American communists.

[ItsOnlyDaryl]

Man, now I’m off to get this book! Horowitz is one of those guys I respect immensely for his ability to recognize the error of his ways and spend years educating others so they don’t repeat his mistakes. I feel like his experience and voice makes him in some ways a more effective ambassador for liberty-loving Americans than those of us who have been “conservatives” (for lack of a better word) their whole lives.

[I want the USA back]

The American college is a perfect example of what happens when marxists take control. Freedom of thought, speech and expression is suppressed. Warring divisions are created and nurtured. Money is taken from the designated “oppressor” group and distributed to the designated “oppressed” groups.

[BobL]

The best thing that any conservative parent can do is KEEP THEIR KIDS HOME, if at all possible.

In other words, don’t send them away to college...if they’re home, the indoctrination will not be nearly as intense and it can be countered on a daily basis.

And, contrary to what many parents believe, going to a top-tier school really doesn’t matter in most professions.

[loveliberty2]

"Money is taken from the designated “oppressor” group and distributed to the designated “oppressed” groups." (From post above)

Two hard line points dominate the cultish and truly oppressive (note absence of quotation marks with oppressive) Progressive ideology, as espoused and practiced by Hillary and the previous Administration.

Now, to those who may tend to favor this primary redistribution Progressive agenda.

First, such an agenda also requires a designated redistributor! Do you really want Hillary and Bill in that dominating spot of the cultish Progressive Regressive agenda?

According to the formula they have followed throughout their lives, it's 90+ per cent for them, plus administrative costs, and what does that leave for you?

[cgbg]

Horowitz is a f___ing hero—fighting to save universities (and the rest of the country) from the dangerous leftists for many many years.

If America honored its real heroes with statues there would be statues of David throughout the land.

Any of his books are worth a read:

https://www.amazon.com/Books-David-Horowitz/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ADavid%20Horowitz

“Radical Son” is his autobiographical masterpiece.

[qaz123]

I wonder if some entity could use the affirmative action laws and force schools to hire conservative, right leaning, libertarian types. It would be great to see something like that done and have a tool of the Left used against them. I can’t imagine the hysteria it would cause but it would be fun to watch.

[A_perfect_lady]

Ayn Rand was talking about it 20 years before Bloom, even.

[miss marmelstein]

Horowitz is what Milo wishes he were. A visionary, indeed.

[miss marmelstein]

I agree with you. I was a day student at my NYC college. I learned later that there was a vast amount of drug taking in the dorms. I doubt I would have been mature enough not to succumb to peer pressure.

[BobL]

I had it both ways - lived the dorm life and saw the same but still kept my head straight, but then kept my kids home and they grew up to be fine conservatives. I strongly suspect that the pressure to conform, and results, for anyone living in a dorm ranks with the torture methods of the Cali Drug Cartel.

[DeweyCA]

FTA: Horowitz in his essays frequently makes an important point: it’s not just the ideological prejudices of this or that faculty member, but a whole institutional, professional, and administrative apparatus that has made possible today’s overwhelmingly leftist and progressive university.

For example, the problem of conservative speakers being underrepresented at campus events is not a dearth of interest among students. At Vanderbilt, a conservative student group called Wake Up America was formed to invite conservative speakers to campus. But the university refused to provide the same sort of funding it gives to other student groups. When challenged, the administrator in charge of Student Life hid behind the Speakers Committee, which Horowitz describes as “a partisan student group dedicated to bringing left-wing speakers to campus.” With $63,000 a year to spend, the Committee had brought expensive lefties like James Carville and Gloria Steinem. Wake Up America, Horowitz writes, in its entire existence “has never been granted a single cent to bring conservatives” to Vanderbilt.

Such largess for leftists go beyond funds dedicated to speakers. In 2002, when Horowitz was invited, Vanderbilt disbursed over a million dollars to student groups ostensibly to promote a “diversity of activities,” in the words of the university. At the same time that Wake Up America received nothing, other identity-politics groups received over $130,000. Horowitz recounts other appearance he made across the country where left-wing speakers received tens of thousands of dollars, while his visit had to be financed by funds raised off campus. As Horowitz notes, such political bias is “completely normal in the academic world.”

Horowitz also shows how the various "studies" majors were simply appeasements to 60s radicals' demands. They were always political, rather than academic endeavors and they have served as a radicalizing element on college campuses to make everything political. Their open hostility to everything conservative also breeds an attitude that "the ends justify the means" and so using force and violence to censor conservatives is thought to be okay.

[Albion Wilde]

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