[The Montana Professor 17.1, Fall 2006 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
David Horowitz
Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2006
448 pp., $27.95 hc
Kim Allen Scott
Special Collections Librarian
MSU-Bozeman
When I graduated from college in 1976, I received a solicitation from the publisher of a vanity directory of American college graduates that assured me I had been found "one of the nation's brightest students" and invited me to pay a small sum for the inclusion of my name in the proposed volume. Thirty years later conservative spokesman David Horowitz has created a new kind of academic directory that might have some people willing to pay a fee to keep their names OUT of the publication. The Professors: 101 of the Most Dangerous Academics in America is a directory of college teachers who earned their listings by an intemperate practice of their First Amendment rights inside and outside of the classroom. From Ward Churchill, the current poster boy for tenure-protected free speech, to Bernardine Dohrn, the former Weather Underground leader who ironically teaches law at Northwestern University, the thumbnail biographical sketches in this book document a fascinating cross-section of professors who seem to have completely lost touch with the values and beliefs of the greater society in which they live.
Horowitz claims the profiled academics in his book consistently violate the AAUP guidelines on academic responsibility by crossing the line between instruction and indoctrination. Horowitz further asserts that free speech in higher education has become the exclusive privilege of professors espousing radical leftist doctrines, while conservative viewpoints from both students and colleagues have been largely silenced through systematic grading and recruiting bias. The chief danger in this situation, according to the author, is that American higher education has been pushed irretrievably to the left of the political spectrum, and that radical faculty are now in a position to perpetuate this situation by a ruthless policing of their ranks to weed out dissenting members. Horowitz asserts that the potential impact on millions of college students "ought to trouble every educator who is concerned about the quality of higher education and every American who cares about the country's future" (xlvi).
One needs only to review recent polls demonstrating the overwhelming support among academics for "liberal" political affiliation to validate Horowitz's concerns. Even the most radical professors will admit that most of their colleagues tend to sympathize with their world view, but they usually attribute this conformity to a belief that any educated person would naturally embrace such values, and not to an enforced limitation from the marketplace of ideas. Empirical evidence of grading bias against conservative students, or a subverted hiring process that guarantees the continued selection of radical faculty, is not easy to produce. However, the cumulative effect of presenting 101 examples of abrasive and impolitic left-wing professors at least helps Horowitz support his allegations that intellectual discrimination routinely occurs in American colleges.
If the subtitle of the book had been "101 of America's Most Kooky Academics," Horowitz would have more accurately described his subjects. Isolated from the cares and concerns of average wage-earning Americans, professors who earn hefty salaries by imperiously denouncing the capitalistic system appear severely hypocritical at best and, at worst, possibly treasonous. For example, Dr. Grover Furr, an English professor at Montclair State University, uses his courses to express his admiration of Stalin and the communist system of government, all at the expense of the taxpayers of New Jersey (186-189). Other academics profiled in this rogues' gallery engage in social commentary that many ordinary citizens would find bizarre and reprehensible. Dr. Gayle Rubin, an anthropologist with the University of Michigan, writes essays which defend pedophilia and denounce the prosecution of child molesters (307-311). Other college teachers arrogantly flaunt their easy life in the ivory tower. Dr. Stanley Aronowitz, sociologist at the City University of New York, openly brags how little actual work he does for his paycheck (23-25).
In his examination of left-leaning professors, Horowitz does a fairly good job of pointing out their quirks, outlandish behavior, and questionable scholarship, but he stumbles in proving his case that their outspoken radicalism results in a widespread problem of grading bias. In the few biographies that attempt to document discrimination against conservative students, Horowitz relies exclusively on comments posted on the website "RateMyProfessor.com," an unmoderated internet blog where professors are evaluated by anonymous posters who, among other criteria, determine which professors are "hot." Anecdotal comments from conservative students who say their teachers gave them low marks do not necessarily establish a pattern of grading bias.
Accusing radical faculty of discrimination in the hiring process, Horowitz likens the professoriate to a sort of Supreme Court with lifetime dictatorial powers used to clone replacements over the years by simply dominating search committees. Again, the author presents no empirical evidence to substantiate this claim, although it is no secret that the faculty comprising the humanities and social sciences at American universities is overwhelmingly "liberal." Perhaps this imbalance is the result of discriminatory hiring practices on the part of search committees, but Horowitz attempts to prove the correlation by relying on simple relational evidence: "Almost all of the professors profiled in this volume were not only hired by search committees and departmental votes, but were promoted at least once (to a tenured rank) and often twice (to a full professorship)"(375). But he ignores the fact that the same process is also used to recruit the relatively few politically conservative academics in the humanities. Pointing out that radical professors were hired or promoted by their peers does not necessarily prove that conservative academics fail to get equal treatment.
While the thumbnail biographies presented in this book form a representational argument that radical political activists have become entrenched on American college faculties, there are some flaws in the author's documentation of the individual professors' activities. Horowitz provides 862 footnotes for his profiles of these "dangerous" academics, but many of the citations simply point to the author's own website or to writers other than the subject being profiled. This faulty documentation forms an argument for discounting Horowitz's claims, since the use of a third party's paraphrase to illustrate a particular subject's beliefs is suspect. For example, in the profile on Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask, a professor at the University of Hawaii who apparently advocates independence for her state, Horowitz provides eight citations, seven of which are from an author who published on Horowitz's own website, FrontPageMag.com (417). The quotation marks that surround Trask's claim that "the enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it" (344) imply that the words were taken directly from the professor, but the wording is actually from a secondary source. In this case and many others, Horowitz could have easily reviewed the professor's publications to find similar damning quotations to link directly to the subject.
Aside from the secondary source citations, Horowitz uses another trick of sophistry to tar these professors. Guilt by association is used over and over again to prove a particular person's anti-American activities. In the profile of distinguished historian Dr. Eric Foner, Horowitz describes an Iraq War protest held at Columbia University in 2003 in which the professor participated. Exercising one's right to disagree with American foreign policy is hardly the stuff of dangerous radical activity, but Horowitz uses the inflammatory comments of another speaker at the rally to condemn Foner. Dr. Nicholas De Genova declared at the rally that the only true heroes were those fighting America's armed forces and that he wished for our soldiers' military defeat and death. While it is true that De Genova actually expressed these sentiments, Foner and other academics who shared the podium quickly repudiated De Genova's treasonous comments. Horowitz, however, merely repeats the De Genova blather in Foner's profile, implying that anyone speaking at the rally must have agreed with these outrageous statements (178).
There is one sense in which these professors could be viewed as "dangerous": they are dangerous to the development offices of the universities that employ them. By insisting on unfettered expression of the most bizarre and politically extreme ideas, the professors in this book place their schools in an unenviable position of alienating the taxpayers and donors who pay the bills. Alienated voters just might choose legislative candidates who promise to reduce funding for higher education, and offended donors may write bigger checks to colleges whose faculty have the sense to practice their "academic freedom" in a manner that does not give students and colleagues the impression of overbearing moral superiority. It is not unpatriotic to oppose the Iraq War, nor is it wrong to advocate progressive social ideas such as gay marriage, but as the old saw goes, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." One can support an unpopular position in politics without sounding as if disagreement would result in a lower classroom grade or a rejected job application, but the professors listed in Horowitz's directory seem never to have learned the knack.
If I were to generalize about the people I have worked with in higher education over the past twenty years, I would have to say that most of them tend to wear their cerebral conceit on their sleeves. Tact and diplomacy are skills honed by successful people in business, but sometimes my colleagues act as if they are above such petty considerations, especially when lecturing to undergraduates, bantering with colleagues, or penning guest opinions to the local newspaper. A tone that implies exclusive ownership of the "truth" is subject to interpretation as a pronouncement from Olympus when it is worded with careless disregard for the more subtle conventions of persuasion. It's really quite simple; one can disagree without becoming disagreeable, and by so doing reassure those of opposing viewpoints that they will not be subject to scorn or discrimination.
The Professors is a good example of the consequences of allowing an overbearing sense of one's intellectual abilities to eclipse consideration for those who may differ on matters of politics and social conventions. The "in your face" advocacy for one political extreme gives rise to the suspicion that radical professors are routinely stifling opposing points of view. This makes these "dangerous academics" a real threat when colleges and universities come up short in the marketplace of ideas that the majority of citizens are willing to pay for.
[The Montana Professor 17.1, Fall 2006 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]