“The professorial task is to teach students how to think, not to tell them what to think.”Back in the summer of 1998, I enrolled in a graduate program at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology. The first night of class began as lecture, yet, after a break, a discussion session broke out. Its primary topic had nothing to do with child development, it concerned whether our text materials had any validity due to the “Eurocentricity” of their authors. The professor wondered aloud, “Why aren’t there more ideas from non-Europeans here?” From there she began a two hour harangue about men, Caucasians, and western culture in general. The question, “Why didn’t more scholars from the third world produce formal works concerning this subject?” was never posed and tenderly avoided. Only I appeared dumbfounded by the proceedings. My lack of participation was noted by the instructor who asked me if something was wrong. I lacked the courage to speak out. The next morning, however, I fought the battle with my credit card by going down to the bursar and withdrawing from the college.
My experience is not that unusual as the instructor, despite the hate she spewed upon her students, did not even warrant mention in David Horowitz’s newest book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Horowitz edited and rewrote many of these entries, some of which originally appeared on a website devoted to uncloaking the identities and activities of the political left. The Professors is a compendium rather than a woven narrative, but its pages are always informative and occasionally quite stunning.
In these short, appalling mini-biographies we are made privy to the belief systems of those most responsible for the decline of the American university. Many of these academics were veterans of the counter-cultural experiment that was the 1960s, and they began their long march through the institutions after reaching adulthood. By blocking the hiring of their ideological opposition, they have created an environment wherein long disproven theories like Marxism and post-modernism are able to still flourish and emit their poison into the greater culture.
Their devotion to power and control may be totalitarian but it certainly has been effective. By denying that there is such a thing as “objectivity” they are able to repudiate the need to search for truth and turn their sections into clubs for aspiring radicals. They then excuse their actions by declaring their “engagement” and that teaching of all forms is “a political act.” Veritas is replaced with opinion while students receive credit for attending rallies and writing papers about why George W. Bush is a war criminal.
The worst abuses occur in the liberal arts departments which are held prisoner to the race, gender, and class religion. Nowhere is the anti-intellectualism of these academics more prominently on display than in their racism. They claim to be “liberals,” but the depth of their race-based hatred is startling.
One of them, Regina Austin, observes, “…start with the premise that black people are at the center of the universe and go on from there.” Amiri Baraka who, for a minute or two, was the poet laureate of New Jersey, wrote: “Most American white men are trained to be f*gs. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank,” and Baraka also contributed to the commonweal with this feel good injunction, “Rape the white girls. Rape their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats.” Joel Feagin added to our collective understanding with this nuance-filled nugget: “There are two types of white Americans: racists and recovering racists.” Leonard Jeffries managed to form a union between racism and anti-Semitism when he proudly put forth: “Jews are a race of skunks and animals that stole Africa from the Black Man.” Yes, the sensitivity police appear to have no jurisdiction when it comes to scholars of color. Hamid Algar remains at his post after correcting Armenian students about the liquidation of their people by the Turks: “It was not a genocide, but I wish it were, you lying pigs.”
Legal clarification on the subject of race is provided by Mary Frances Berry: “Civil rights laws were not passed to give civil rights protection to all Americans.” No, why would white Americans need such protections with apparatchiks like Berry training minds while being employed by the federal government? Michael Eric Dyson argued that any suggestion that black Americans should take responsibility for their lives is absolutely anathema. To this Penn scholar, Tupac Shakur with his thug life, as opposed to Bill Cosby, is the individual whom youth should embrace. The untalented bell hooks weighs in on the question of racial harmony by confiding to readers, “I am writing this essay sitting beside an anonymous white male that I long to murder.”
With statements like these there really is no need to hatch conspiracy theories, that many scholars in America are racist is self-evident. We discover that the mother of the 1984ish university speech codes, Mari Matsuda, openly admitted that the right not to be offended does not extend to everyone. The privileged white male is exempt from such protections. It’s a good thing that so many of my fellow privilegees are unable to locate employment applications for the faculty of Georgetown Law or we may opt to be oppressed in the same six figure manner she currently is.
In light of this institutional anti-white racism, Caucasians should feel fortunate just to be allowed the use of drinking fountains and buses as the only lesson to be learned from Jim Crow is that racism is okay as long as it’s directed against the right people. We live in a nation so drenched in white guilt that one of these professors actually escaped a jail sentence by arguing that the witnesses to her crime were not credible as they were white and people of that persuasion are genetically incapable of telling one black person from another.
No story of today’s colleges would be complete without addressing feminism. There is no shortage of feministas among the 101 who are analyzed here. Horowitz introduces us to Bettina Aptheker who, as daughter of communist legend Herbert Aptheker, was practically a professorial legacy. She holds that changing one’s sexual orientation is the last stage in our society’s progression from post-feudalism, post-capitalism, and post-socialism. To her, lesbianism is the “highest stage of feminism.” I concur wholeheartedly. Gayle Rubin of Michigan was the recipient of the prestigious Woman of the Year award from the National Leather Association (a sadism & masochism organization), and deems the practice of pedophilia to be in the interest of the feminist and gay community.
Class, with all its Marxist clunk and clamor, is integral to the identity of high achievers like Eric Foner, Michael Berube, Robert Dunkley, Miriam Cooke, Rick Eckstein, and Richard Falk. Many of these men and women have political beliefs which begin and end with socialism. This often takes the form of an outward devotion to “social justice,” and is intrinsic to the curriculums of feminist studies, post-colonialist studies, and liberation theology. To argue that previous attempts to mandate state socialism have been egregious failures which resulted in crimes against humanity is to simply not get it. The Venona decrypts, which proved that scores of Americans were members of the Soviet intelligence service, means nothing to experts like Victor Navasky who disavows all contrary evidence and will defend the Rosenbergs until the day he dies.
A reflexive hatred for all things Israeli seems to be a prerequisite for entering the professoriate today. The depth of vitriol directed at this microscopic Middle-Eastern nation is astounding. Israel is an obsession and compulsion to these educationists. Nowhere is the conformity of these minds more visible than in their cookie-cutter denunciations of that particular state. Countless political activists posing as scholars, such as like Laurie Brand, Norman Finkelstein, Dana Cloud, Marc Ellis, Hamid Dabashi, Joseph Massad, Nicholas De Genova, have made entire careers out of thrashing this piñata entity wherein Arab citizens live freer lives than they ever could in Syria or Egypt. Our Ivory Domers would disagree, however, and will always label Islamofascists as “so-called terrorists.”
I suspect that the real reason for the academic Palestinian fetish can be found in the confinement produced by having to work within the guidelines of political correctness. One must study the Middle East rather than Africa because if you didn’t there would be no way to blame the west for everything wrong in the world today. Too close an examination of African tribal relations or clitoraldectomies would lead to the acknowledgement that brutality and injustice have been present for millenniums. Besides, a pedagogue who writes papers about the Sudan or Robert Mugabe will never be invited to A list demonstrations or sit upon the dais when Michael Moore speaks.
Obviously the left will avoid reviewing this work. From my past dealings with them I believe they will summarily dismiss The Professors by labeling it a McCarthyist blacklist plot, and also that those figures discussed are in no way characteristic of college faculties on the whole.
Let me respond to the possible McCarthyist objection first. Although “Naming Names” is best practice in regards to university bias, David Horowitz does not have the power to blacklist anyone. What this work accomplishes is to merely give notice to those leftists who disguise themselves as “liberal” and excuse their propagandize with the phrase, “everything’s political,” that we’re ready to highlight and respond to their transgressions. Identification should allow some students to avoid being subjected to their machinations. Hopefully, more and more moderates will become aware of the brainwashing in store for their children, and boycott colleges which allow lecturers to confuse activism for instruction.
As for representativeness, Horowitz addresses this question in his third chapter. He convincingly postulates that universities are conformist by nature and that faculties are formed in the image of those who do the hiring. This is the method by which our campuses have reached the point of toxicity and where radicals reign supreme. Many times the “long short list” of potential candidates for positions is narrowed down by the department chair and reflect their ideological inclinations. The rest of the department is then presented with a fait accompli or a “pick any leftist you want” scenario when approving new colleagues. The law of group polarization causes colleges to become more and more left wing as, with no dissenting opinions to counter-balance it, the center moves to the extreme.
What one is left with upon completion of The Professors is a sense of sadness. Yes, it’s easy to laugh about the don who believes that teaching proper English is akin to oppression, and of the gay professor who opens sections by announcing, “My name is Michael Vocino and I like d*ck,” but somebody somewhere is having their bank account, prospects, and perceptions destroyed by this useless evangelizing. Just how many sections of “Gender, Nationalism, and War,” “Hip-Hop Eshu: Queen B*tch 101—The Life and Times of Lil’ Kim,” “They’ve Killed Kenny,” or “Feminist Geography” must one take before being considered truly educated? Such questions are best left unanswered if you’re a comptroller at a liberal arts institution.
Students mortgage their futures to pay for classes which will only delude, demoralize, and miseducate them. Only the very young and impressionable could survey America and confuse bounty, liberty, and security with oppression, conspiracy, and hate; yet, novices are exactly the people whom these pseudo-intellectuals lord over. In light of this work and the admission that school is now all-too-often a place for indoctrination, perhaps the next time someone impugns the reader for questioning the patriotism of the left, quote to him or her the words of a scholar1: “Under no circumstances, therefore, should we ever support the U.S. government or believe what it says.” This can be more accurately applied to the multitude of pronouncements and publications emanating from our corrupted universities.
Bernard Chapin
I’m sorry, but this is the most worn out argument against academia that I’ve ever heard. Yes, in education you find liberalism, but that is the nature of pedagogy. I have yet to come across a conservative praxis that couldn’t also be classified as going to church.
I guess I have three strikes against me here, but I’m a professor, I’m liberal, and I’m also a “paedophile”—I dig boys 9-14, another debate entirely. While I don’t go around advertising my sexual orientation (which was also shared by Jesus and Plato) or political affiliations in my classes, I make it clear that my students know I’m not a fence-sitter.
Academia rubs conservatism the wrong way because reason and logic are antithesis to rightwing ideology. You can’t talk about the humanist tradition in the Renaissance while currently espousing anti-Semitic or anti-Black opinions; the two just don’t jive. If you want that sort of stuff, turn on Fox News.
Perhaps one should talk to these professors not about what they think, but about **how they teach**
You have got to be kidding me! A pedophile expects us to listen to him regarding what is “good” in the world. Give me a break!
Personally, my favorite element of this story is that David Horowitz considers this rant the first actual “review” of his book. Of course its nothing of the sort; regardless of whether you agree with Chapin or not, his piece is a celebration of like-minded views, with no pretense of critical analysis or anything else normally found in a review. That two radical right extremists share similar perspectives on academia is interesting at some level, I suppose, but the fact that Horowitz celebrates this as the first recognition of his book is, well, pathetic.
No, truth4achange is pathetic. Anyone who by their handle feels they have the corner on truth is obviously a liberal. How can you tell? Because as much as liberals love to tell you that there is no such thing as objective truth they always seem to have it. It doesn’t make sense to me either.
Horowitz knows that he will deliberately be shut out by mainstream book reviewers because of his politics so he gets what he can. You can’t blame him for that.
A paedophile Professor who wishes to remain anonymous, disagrees. Hmmmmm. Maybe he’s miffed ’cause he didn’t make the list yet. Ah well, some shit floats and some sinks.
…And Horowitz is exactly right to uncover and to document for the public the radicalism of tenured college professors who preach Marxism, male-bashing, “multiculturalism,” and any other number of leftwing inanities that pass for “college education.” We are not paying the professors to opine about their political leanings.
Sorry – if you advertise “education” and instead sell “liberal/Marxist indoctrination,” that is called false advertising. If colleges were run like businesses instead of government entitlement programs, most would’ve been open and closed within five years. Their constant tuition increases, mediocre output and increasing irrelevance to what they actually claim to sell causes many of the customers (us) to wonder what the hell the people “in charge” are trying to accomplish. Faculties and controversial departments as well as administrators have nobody but the radical left and themselves to blame for the problems they are now facing.
When students graduate from college, they are expected to go into the world with skills and knowledge that they may actually apply one day, not long-debunked and dead Marxist/socialist propaganda that does nothing to advance or enlighten anybody. Marxism closes the mind, encourages adherence to its self-serving religion and discriminates against all classes, production levels and races. It has been proven a catastrophic failure for humanity everywhere it has been implemented (regardless of intent).
Ignoring the facts about radical leftwing domination of academia does not change the facts. I am currently finishing my graduate work at a large and well known University in Philadelphia, and I have yet to attend one class just this semester in which I am not subjected to snide and off-handed opinions/comments by my “teachers” about “right-wing nutballs” and “scary times to be an American during this Presidency” interjected into nearly every discussion. That doesn’t even include the brainwashed students in the classes. I have hard evidence in my posession to verify this, should I need to. Since I did undergrad work at the same school, I noticed it has been going on since at least 2000 (the terminal Bush Derangement Syndrome, that is).
Find comparable vitriol and radicalism on the right in Universities across the nation, and then document them and write your own book, if you are that certain that this well-founded and meticulously sourced statement is “pathetic.” I’ve seen none of your evidence to refute this, and after reading a pedophile’s professor’s post as the first response here, it makes a nice case and point to Horowitz’s argument.
Methinks the left doth protest too much, if this is indeed all hullabaloo (which the anti-Righties claim but can’t prove that it is). Throw a stone into a pack of hyenas, and the one that yelps the loudest is the one on which you scored the direct hit.
Bravo, Mr. Horowitz.
Actually, your comment truth4achange…. is that you are a pedant, who refuses to hear the very words, the vugarities, the vicious hatreds, that the ‘reviewer’ just related from within the pages.
Vicious, snarling, lying, dissimulation- and all you can come back with- is a comment that the reviewer and the writer are radical right extremists.
The fact that you are numb as a boot, and intellectually and ethically dead from the neck up screams reams of information….’go read the book, go read the book’ is what people see floating by a post such as yours.
Pitiful.
Mark
‘Shared by Jesus’
What an Utter Crock. Replace Jesus with Mo and you will be in the right ballpark, buddy.
truth4achange, you wouldn’t be one of those people who claims he Never hears anything bad said about Christians and the like, on campus? Perhaps it is because you are two busy laughing over such hate-filled slurs…
Bravo, Mr. Chapin. Keep up the good work.
‘Shared by Jesus’
What an Utter Crock. Replace Jesus with Mo and you will be in the right ballpark, buddy.
truth4achange, you wouldn’t be one of those people who claims he Never hears anything bad said about Christians and the like, on campus? Perhaps it is because you are two busy laughing over such hate-filled slurs…
Bravo, Mr. Chapin. Keep up the good work.
The very first comment here, posted by anonymous, is suspicious. I am tempted to think it was drafted by a strident right-winger, for no ‘liberal,’ paedophilic, professor could be so empty, so predictably empty. Mr. Anonymous, after all, must not know his material: for liberals, passion always trumps reason. Come now. Leftists have long considered conservatism heartless and cold due to its penchant for reason; how else to explain then-presidential candidate Bush’s 1999 repackaging of conservatism as “compassionate conservatism?” If you want analytic reasoning, turn to a conservative: George Will, William F. Buckley, (the late) Allan Bloom, or John Leo; these folks would sweep the floor with the most “rational” team of liberals one could assemble. Reason is a conservative virtue deemed a vice by conservatism’s critics.
Why do so many professors lean left? In part, I believe, it is the very nature of the professorship: universities, from the inside, are perfect little socialist communes, where everyone has a rôle, a job, for which they are rewarded according to ability and need; while the money just comes from “who-knows-where?” Moreover, professors are forced by the very nature of the Ph.D.-process to be iconoclasts: for they must produce theses that are — ostensibly — original. Hence, Ph.D. candidates produce the most wild theses for consideration, like, Feline Abuse, “The Cat in the Hat,” and Androgyne Exploitation in the American Haberdashery Industry, or, Racism and Crayola: Why So Few Crayons Represented Central African Aesthetic Theory And Landscape Hues In The 1950’s. For the doctorate industry to survive, truth can’t be truth, ie. static and normative; truth must be elastic and relative, a matter of debate and fodder for opinionmaking.
Of course, I hyperbolize, but not by much. Professors are constantly pressured to conform to the expectations of their colleagues; to produce new and unique material, justifying their existences and, at least prima facie, their tenures. But if there are indeed answers in the canon of Western thought; if there are indeed timeless truths to be found therein, today’s professors are not interested, for timeless truths and the thoughts of predecessors dislocate today’s “innovators” from the center of the university. What professor in his right mind would ever admit that Aristotle was smarter than he’ll ever be, or that Pascal, in fact, did answer a question once for all?
I will read David Horowitz’s book, and I will think it through on my own, though I will depend on the help I’ve received from Plato, Aquinas and Descartes, to name a few.
Thanks.
Bill Gnade
Its possible that the entry by Anonymous who claims he’s also a “paedophile” is merely the work of a provocateur, but for the sake of argument, I’ll assume that Mr. Diddle is serious–besides, there’s enough snark and pomposity in the comment to conclude its sincere.
That Mr. Diddle doesn’t understand how damaging to his credibility the admission of “digging” young boys is only underscores how pervasive the pathologies are that infect “academic” minds.
But what I always love the best from the professor class (as well as the journalist class) is their devotion to assertion:
“Academia rubs conservatism the wrong way because reason and logic are antithesis to rightwing ideology. You can’t talk about the humanist tradition in the Renaissance while currently espousing anti-Semitic or anti-Black opinions; the two just don’t jive [sic]. If you want that sort of stuff, turn on Fox News.”
No facts, no evidence, just a lofty pronouncement. In other words, people who disagree with Mr. Diddle are deeply flawed and racist. Mr. Diddle has spent so much time in an intellectual vacuum that he actually believes these self-serving mantras: We on the Left are brave and noble practitioners of logic and reason–and anyone who disagrees is a bigot, racist, homophobe, McCarthyite, Nazi, sexist, war-mongering, Bible-thumping fool.
We are at the beginning of a new age in academia where professors will have to be accountable to more than their own self-serving opinions of themselves. Naturally, they resist mightily for they have enjoyed something few ever experience: job security without regard to performance. Everyone of us in the real world has our work product analyzed and reviewed. That’s a healthy thing. Its time for people like Mr. Diddle to have their performance under a bit of scrutiny as well. If they were more concerned about doing a good job, perhaps they would spend less time daydreaming about young boys.
Withdrawing from the class at the School of Professional Psychology is certainly a reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is unlikely to have any effect on the professorial behavior you decry. Most schools receive the bulk of their funding from third part sources like governments and endowments. Your withdrawal from the class is too small an irritant for them to notice.
How about suing them? The school offered a psychology course. The professor delivered something else. That’s a breach of contract. Of course the professors will try to change the subject to “academic freedom”, but if it can be sufficiently emphasized that a professor is free to teach anything so long as the professor honestly tells the students what they are going to be taught, then maybe a court’s attention can be kept on the “breach of contract” aspect of the suit. It could be fun, if nothing else.