David Horowitz Speaks at UCSC
Author of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, David Horowitz came to speak at UC Santa Cruz last night, which he claims in the worst school in America. I attended the event and sent my notes on the talk to Twitter throughout the talk:
- About to see David Horowitz speak. He thinks UCSC is the worst school in America. I disagree.
- We were forced to leave so that they can secure the room. Someone thinks he’s more important than he is.
- One attendee has modified an Obama sign to read Horowitz, with one O being the Obama logo.
- Horowitz: I’m not anti-gay1.
- Horowitz: UCSC students are only exposed to the left. Can’t see the truth if you don’t hear from both sides.
- Protesters outside are crowded around the windows.
- A man claiming to be Liberal Bias interrupted the talk and called Horowitz evil.
- He’s giving the basic separation of opinion and fact, indoctrination and study lecture.
- Horowitz: There’s a difference between academic freedom and free speech.
- Protesters outside are loudly booing his criticism of the Feminist Studies department.
- Horowitz: I interviewed 5 Politics students before writing my article. I never claimed to take a scientific survey of the school.
- The label of worst school is because of the prevalence of indoctrinating/opinion oriented classes.
- Horowitz: Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory and not be taught as one.
- Pounding on the windows still persists. It’s rather pointless and annoying.
- Horowitz: If you think people are good, you’re a Liberal. If you think people are the problem you’re a Conservative.
- He left in a hurry after the moderated Q&A. Guess he didn’t want to talk one on one with people.
Since I am a student of the Politics department I can relay my own experience with academic bias. While I will most certainly admit that most of professors are left-leaning and on occasion let if be known that they do not approve of the policies of the Bush Administration, I have in my Politics education been presented with ideas ranging from Karl Marx, Communism and the Communist Manifesto to Neoconservatism to Realistic Wilsonianism2.
Ironically the most biased class I have ever taken at UCSC was Politics of Advanced Industrialized Societies with Samuel DeCanio, whose extreme conservative bias is made quite clear in a interview he gave to the campus newspaper, City on a Hill Press:
In general, minimum wage hikes are among the most counterproductive policies that are used to try to combat poverty. Considerable research has documented that minimum wage regulations actually increase levels of unemployment.
There is no doubt that bias exists in academics and that this bias is passed to students3, however the bias, at least in the Politics department, is not limited to the left and certainly is not as rampant as Horowitz would have people believe. His admission that he only interviewed 5 students from the Politics department and his rather shallow investigation into biased courses in the Politics department speaks of someone who seeks to garner attention for his own political ends, not of someone who wishes to encourage academic freedom and integrity.
Most disconcerting of all is Horowitz’s underlying assumption that students are simple-minded drones incapable of spotting bias, who instead of challenging bias can only swallow the pill that the professors feed them. It is because of this egregious assumption and his vast ignorance of what is actually taught to UCSC students—at the very least in the Politics department—that we must suffer through interviews in which the quality of out education is called into question. Thus, not only does Horowitz misrepresent bias at UCSC he misses his target of professors and instead injures the very people he claims to be seeking to help, the students.
1 This comment he made in response to a flyer that was being circulated by the protest groups, which claim that Horowitz is a homophobe.
2 Realistic Wilsonianism is from Francis Fukuyama’s America at the Crossroads in which he discusses his disillusionment with Neoconservatism and forges his own path for a conservative future.
3 Some argue, however that it is not the role of a Professor to remain an objective observer of the system, but to teach as a subjective participant.
May 28, 2008