The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America: David Horowitz Interview (2007)

• published: 29 Jan 2015
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David Joel Horowitz (born January 10, 1939) is an American conservative writer. He is a founder and current president of the think tank the David Horowitz Freedom Center, editor of FrontPage Magazine, and director of Discover the Networks, a website that tracks individuals and groups on the political left. Horowitz founded the organization Students for Academic Freedom, whose self-stated goal is combating what it calls the "leftist indoctrination" in academia. Horowitz was raised by parents who were members of the Communist Party USA. Between 1956 and 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left before rejecting leftism completely. Horowitz has recounted his ideological journey in a series of retrospectives, culminating with his 1996 memoir Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey. For nearly a decade, Horowitz's rejection of Marx remained a private matter. In the spring of 1985, however, Horowitz and longtime collaborator Peter Collier wrote an article for The Washington Post entitled "Goodbye to All That". The article explained their change of views and recent decision to vote for President Ronald Reagan.[16] In 1986 he published "Why I Am No Longer a Leftist" in the Village Voice.[17] Horowitz has not been completely welcomed by the conservative right. Jay Nordlinger says conservatives are uneasy with Horowitz's activism and confrontational style.[18] In 1987, Horowitz co-hosted a "Second Thoughts Conference" in Washington, D.C., described by Sidney Blumenthal in The Washington Post as his "coming out" as a social conservative. According to attendee Alexander Cockburn, Horowitz related how his Stalinist parents had not permitted him or his sister to watch Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies. Instead, they were required to watch propaganda films from the Soviet Union.[19] In May 1989, Horowitz, Ronald Radosh, and Peter Collier travelled to Poland for a conference in Kraków calling for the end of Communism. Horowitz has also opposed reparations for slavery as something inherently racist against blacks. He argues that applying labels like "descendents of slaves" to blacks would damage their self-esteem and segregate them from mainstream society.[23] Horowitz purchased, or attempted to purchase, advertising space in school publications in order to publicize his opinion that African Americans are not entitled to reparations for Slavery in the United States. Many of these offers were refused and, at some schools, papers which carried the ads were stolen or destroyed. While he supported the interventionist foreign policy associated with the Bush Doctrine, Horowitz opposed American intervention in the Kosovo War, arguing that it was unnecessary and harmful to U.S. interests. He has recently been critical of libertarian anti-war views. In 2004, Horowitz launched Discover the Networks, a conservative watchdog project that monitors funding for, and various ties among, leftists and progressive causes. In his 2004 book, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, Horowitz contends that leftists support, intentionally or not, Islamist terrorism, and thus require ongoing scrutiny. In two books, Horowitz accused Dana L. Cloud, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Texas at Austin, as an “anti-American radical" who "routinely repeats the propaganda of the Saddam regime" and, along with all of the 99 other professors in his book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, Horowitz accuses her of the "explicit introduction of political agendas into the classroom." (pp. 93, 377) He felt his claim was substantiated when Cloud stated after 9/11 that: "the United States military has, in recent years, been the most effective and constant killer of civilians around the world." After discussion, the National Communication Association chose not to grant Horowitz a spot as a panelist at its national conference in 2008, even after he agreed to forego the $7,000 speaking fee he had requested. Horowitz replied, "The fact that no academic group has had the balls to invite me says a lot about the ability of academic associations to discuss important issues if a political minority wants to censor them." An association official said the decision was based in part on Horowitz's request to be provided with a stipend for $500 to hire a personal bodyguard. Association officials decided that having a bodyguard present "communicates the expectation of confrontation and violence." While Horowitz was on the Riz Khan television show with Hussein Ibish, he was reported by Ibish to have published on his Frontpage Mag website: Arabs do nothing on impulse, Muslims have no allegiance to their countries, [and] their only allegiance is to Islam, that's what they have been taught since birth that's all they know, Muslims have no borders" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz