http://tinyurl.com/radical-caucus-on-horowitz-mla

December 29, 2008

Re: DAOC’s inviting David Horowitz to participate in the session on "Academic Freedom?"

[NOTE: See the essays linked at the bottom of this page for full documentation of our chargse against Horowitz]

We strongly oppose the decision of the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee (DAOC) to include David Horowitz as a speaker in the DAOC-sponsored session on "Academic Freedom?" At a time when the "adjunctification" of our profession is making more and more teachers fearful of freely expressing their views—and when the perilous state of our society is calling upon more and more of us to be not fainter but bolder in expressing our views—the MLA’s rolling out of the red carpet to one of the premier enemies of academic freedom is a serious error indeed.

As many academics know, David Horowitz—editor of the blog Frontpagemag.com and of a number of books attacking leftist and progressive college and university teachers—embraces dangerously reactionary and racist views. Horowitz incited the campus movement against reparations, declaring that African Americans lacked motivation to succeed and were the luckiest black people on the planet. Frontpagemag.com routinely features writers with extreme right-wing connections, such as the neo-Nazi James Lubinska. Horowitz’s recent book The Professors singles out the 100 professors he deems unfit to teach in higher education because of their political views. He has advocated nationally for a so-called Academic Bill of Rights that would require all professors to "balance" their curricula by giving equal time to conservative standpoints.

The reason why we in the Radical Caucus oppose Horowitz’s invited presence at the MLA, however, is not simply that he espouses views many people find troublesome, even repugnant. It is that he consistently misrepresents the views of academics whom he wishes to discredit. He is not a scholar but a liar of the Goebbels school.

For example: Horowitz has made the false claim that Professor Grover Furr of Montclair State University—a MLA member of many years standing who has written extensively on the history of the USSR, and has published in Russian a highly regarded best-selling book on the subject—offers a course "in which he can teach his ridiculous opinions." Professor Furr’s web page makes it abundantly clear that he has never taught a course on the USSR. Rather than explaining why he disagrees with Prof. Furr’s conclusions, Horowitz lies about Prof. Furr’s pedagogy. He practices this kind of distortion throughout his commentary on Prof. Furr.

For example: Horowitz claims that Professor George Wolfe of Ball State University is "anti-Israel" because Wolfe favors a two-state solution. Rather than justifying this characterization, Horowitz claims that the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Ball State, which Wolfe heads, funds the campus Peacemakers chapter. (It in fact gets zero money from the Center).

Horowitz flagrantly mischaracterizes the views of leftist professors and portrays these professors as illegitimately influencing students. Horowitz tries to appeal to his audience on the basis of fair-mindedness, claiming that the dominance of professors he terms leftist prevents debate in the academy and inhibits the search for truth. But he consistently violates this principle himself.  He is not a thoughtful critic of the views he opposes, or a "controversial" figure in valid debates, but a propagandist, engaging in the promulgation of distortions, falsehoods, and slander. If the DAOC simply wants to air a conservative viewpoint, they can count on another panelist, Professor Mark Bauerlein—himself a Frontpagemag.com columnist—to supply this.

In these days when academic freedom is under dire threat, the DAOC has chosen to stack the panel in favor of right-wing views. The DAOC should apologize to us for degrading the level of scholarship and debate that MLA members legitimately expect from any session they attend at the convention.