In what I can only assume is the cosmic retribution for Maya Angelou speaking to the student body last spring, David Horowitz, author of the book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” will be lecturing at Brown Hall auditorium at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Horowitz’s main tactic for propagating his opinion and those of the people paying him seems to be the same tactic that I use to get dates; lying and spreading misinformation. The title of the book itself is false; there are only 100 professors listed in its pages.
A large portion of the claims made in the book he will be promoting are either partially or altogether false. When not fabricating, Horowitz misuses information or lies by omission.
Here are a few examples found at the Web site free exchange on campus.org where Horowitz’s errors and omissions have been cataloged:
Horowitz writes that Professor Elizabeth Brumfiel, “Called on anthropology scholars to take a leading role as anthropologists against the Iraq War.”
Horowitz cites no evidence to back up this claim. Brumfiel responds, “I have not ‘called on anthropology scholars to take a leading role as anthropologists against the Iraq War.'”
After listing several articles whose content Horowitz believes disqualifies Professor Kathleen Cleaver from holding her position, Horowitz writes that Cleaver has no qualifications to teach at a major law school.
Cleaver is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, holds a law degree from Yale University and has clerked for the late Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, senior judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom).
These types of qualifications – a degree from a top law school and an appellate court clerkship – are the same as those of scores of professors at major law schools across the country, but Horowitz fails to mention them.
Horowitz quotes Professor Mark Ensalaco as saying, “I see that our students are angry and hurt about what happened in New York and Washington [on 9/11], and as important as it is for us to promote learning here at the University, I think it’s also important to promote tolerance. Horowitz then writes, “By tolerance, Professor Ensalaco meant tolerance for those who appear to be America’s enemies.”
Horowitz cites no evidence to back up his claim that what Professor Ensalaco is truly advocating in the quote above is “tolerance for those who appear to be America’s enemies.”
The list of errors goes on for pages at Free Exchange on Campus. Whenever confronted with the errors in his book, Horowitz will either shift the blame to the 30 student researchers hired for the compilation of the book or attack the person questioning him. I have yet to find a single statement of him admitting fault with his book full of unfounded accusations. Interesting, since there are so many proven accounts of errors in said book.
I don’t understand why the SGA chose to waste some of our funds by bringing someone that not only propagates the practice of undue criticism, irresponsible and potentially career-damaging accusations but has also proven himself incompetent by producing a book so rife with erroneous information.
In the act of putting together a ridiculously inaccurate piece of propaganda, Horowitz succeeds in doing one of the very things that he is attacking professors for.
Even though one of the main assertions of his book is that professors should not teach or even comment in the classroom on things outside of their specific area of expertise, Horowitz, who has a master’s degree in English, has never sat on a hiring committee or taught, is handing down edicts on how the higher education system in this country should work.

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