David Horowitz (ex-Marxist)

David Horowitz was an activist in the New Left movement in the 1960's and claims to have been "a lifelong civil rights activist". He was editor of an anti-Vietnam war magazine: Ramparts. However, currently, Horowitz is known to side with corporate interests and conservative ideals, and is best described as a neo-con. He is now a "lapsed leftist" [1]. In the 1990s, Horowitz hosted several Second Thinkers conferences where ex-leftists who recanted or underwent epiphanies could network with fellow travelers. Several of these second thinkers are now neo-cons. Christopher Hitchens was a regular participant at these conferences, and today co-organizes events with Horowitz, e.g., tour of the UK where he features as a speaker [2].

David Horowitz was a speaker at the 2003 Conservative Political Action Conference, which reads as a who's-who of the conservative and neo-conservative movement.

Horowitz also created a now-defunct nonprofit campaign finance 527 advocacy organization known as PoliticalWar.com Inc. prior to the 2002 election cycle.

Horowitz runs the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the online magazine FrontPageMag.com which he uses as a platform to push his neo-con agenda. He is currently pushing to "expose" the The Leftist Campaign to Control America's Young Minds and is promoting a nationwide boycott of "old" Europe goods as a protest against French, German and Belgian opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq. Horowitz also publishes a regular column in Salon.com, and is a regular pundit on right-wing shows.

In his Marxist days, Horowitz authored several books including Free World Colossus, Corporations and the Cold War, Empire and Revolution, Marx and Modern Economics, Shakespeare: An Existential View and The Fate of Midas, which he has subsequently repudiated. He has subsequently collaborated with David Collier on several biographies of famous American families, including The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty, The Kennedys: An American Drama, and The Fords: An American Epic. His recent books include Radical Son (an autobiography), Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes, Why I'm Not a Liberal, The Feminist Assault on the Military, Noam Chomsky's Jihad Against America, Liberal Racism, and How the Left Undermined America's Security.

In a December 10, 2004 article for FrontPage magazine, Horowitz branded SourceWatch a 'smear site'. He included other sites such as Media Matters for America, NameBase, and Southern Poverty Law Center in the accusation. [3]

Horowitz's latest project is Students for Academic Freedom which is trying to make college campuses more conservative. He speaks around the country about "leftist control" of hiring committees and promotes his own Academic Bill of Rights as part of the solution. He has also suggested starting departments of "Conservative Studies", thus allowing students to choose which point of view they'd like to get.

What others say

A contemporary of Horowitz's during his Ramparts days described his political transition from the left to the right in 1991,

The phone rings and a guy in my office says, "It's David Horowitz." I haven't spoken to David Horowitz since the end of the '60s, when we both worked at Ramparts. Since then, with another former Ramparts editor, Peter Collier, this little creep has written a series of best-selling portraits of ruling class families--The Rockefellers, The Fords, The Kennedys--and boasted in print about voting for Ronald Reagan. Horowitz and Collier say they once believed fervently in left causes and institutions (from the Soviet Union to the Black Panther Party), and when they discovered these institutions to be corrupt and murderous they had to denounce them and come out for the other side.

There are many flaws in this "logic." For openers, there aren't just two sides in this world (the fake left and the cruel right). And sure it's demoralizing to learn that the party that supposedly stands for equality is run by opportunists and actually stands for privilege. But that wouldn't lead a real radical to endorse the all-out pursuit of privilege. It should lead you to call for a movement that's serious about establishing equality. Horowitz and Collier were never radicals for a minute. Their goal was and is personal success. It's no coincidence that they were "left" in the '60s and "right" in the '80s.

Gardner, Fred

"Hollywood Confidential: Part I"[4]

Viet Nam Generation Journal & Newsletter-V3, N3 (November 1991)[5]

Published Online by The Sixties Project[6]

Horowitz Confessed to Treason

Horowitz has openly admitted he committed treason against the United States. He confessed in an article written by him and published in his own online zine, FrontPage, on October 3, 2000. In the article, titled "The Wen Ho Lee Cover-Up", Horowitz claimed that Wen Ho Lee was guilty of espionage, but the government decined to press charges because of the damage it would do to the inteligence services and William Clinton's presidential legacy. As anecdotal evidence to back-up this claim, he describes his own premeditated actions that violated the U.S. Espionage code in 1972, for which was never prosecuted.

Ramparts, a magazine he was editor of, had acquired classified intelligence information from a former NSA operative and had published it, eventhough one of their own staffers, who had formerly served in Army Intelligence, had judged the information to be truthful, and refused to work on the story, and Horowitz knew this prior to the publication of the Ramparts story. Horowitz also sought the advice of a prominent Constitutional scholar before publishing it, who had explained to him the best methods of avoiding prosecution for this act of treason.

Discover the Network

On February 15, 2005, Horowitz launched DiscoverTheNetwork, a website dedictated to tracking "leftists". It brings the Campus-Watch formula to the wider political arena. In the About Us section of the new website:

a "Guide to the Political Left." It identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left's (often hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and ideas.[7]

Messing with Academic Freedom

Horowitz’s latest crusade is that for so-called "academic freedom." Seeing colleges and universities as the last bastion of "liberal indoctrination," he authored an Academic Bill of Rights that would act to restore "balance" to higher education by eradicating "political indoctrination in the classroom and the exclusion of conservatives from college faculties." The Academic Bill of Rights’ carefully "bipartisan" language is meant to maintain that it does not favor one side over another, but aims for the exploration of a plurality of ideas in the classroom. It directly promotes equal treatment of students and consideration of faculty for hiring and tenure "not on the basis of political or religious beliefs." However, mentions of course curriculums, reading lists, and private meetings in which hiring and tenure positions are discussed lead some to wonder how the bill will be enforced and how much state intervention it would entail.

Students for Academic Freedom, an organization founded by Horowitz (not students) in 2003, has become the platform for launching the Academic Freedom campaign as well as ABOR. SAF has set up over 150 chapters on campuses across the country to promote the "intellectual diversity" agenda. Members are encouraged to contact their state legislators petitioning them to advocate for and pass ABOR.

Horowitz says he saw the need for such a bill of rights after he had heard many complaints from students (most of whom were conservative) that they had received unfair treatment from (liberal) professors. The case of a University of Northern Colorado student who had received a failing grade on a paper that reportedly refused to address the question of "Why President Bush is a war criminal?" became the paradigmatic statement on liberal indoctrination in college classrooms. However, [Frontpagemag.com], Horowitz’s online magazine and his own reporting misconstrued the question and the university’s response to the complaint; when his doctoring of the facts came out, he justified the incident stating "some of our facts were wrong; our point was right."[8]

This endeavor has been repeatedly criticized by Prof. Juan Cole's, for example:

Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, has introduced a Horowitz-inspired so-called Academic Freedom Bill of Rights in the Florida State legislature. In our Orwellian world, this is actually a bill to destroy academic freedom and take away rights of free speech on campus. Baxley is a funeral director, and apparently he wants to bury higher education in this country along with his other clients.

"The bill sets a statewide standard that students cannot be punished for professing beliefs with which their professors disagree. Professors would also be advised to teach alternative “serious academic theories” that may disagree with their personal views.
According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.
Students who believe their professor is singling them out for “public ridicule” – for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class – would also be given the right to sue.
“Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,’” Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue."

Let me explain some things to Representative Baxley, and to do so I suggest we look at how well he is doing his job.

… I wonder if Baxley has done anything lately for the 18 percent of his constituents who are doomed to live below the poverty line? Or, indeed, has he provided jobs and income to his hardworking constituents. If I were them, I'd find a state representative who would work hard to lift people out of their difficult circumstances, instead of one who seems to want to keep people mired in ignorance and poverty.
So if Baxley, who desperately needed to take Biology 101 at Florida State (which should consider revoking his BA), succeeded in his little ploy, what will likely ensue?
If I were Baxley I wouldn't stand anywhere near I-95 north of Gainesville, since he's likely to get run over by the rush of professors fleeing the state at 95 miles an hour. Post-secondary teachers already suffer from low salaries and poor working conditions compared to their peers who go into the professions. The only trade-off they get is that academics have more control over their lives and the time to research and teach things they are interested in. Given a choice between being made Baxley's slaves and braving hurricanes in Florida or living in a state that respects its thinkers, Florida's educators will pour out of the state faster than a 'gator chasing a fat, balding funeral director through the swamps.
Baxley may be happier without any of those intell-Ec-tu-al riffraff cluttering up his state. But maybe his constituents won't be. Knowledge workers, you see, are the geese that lay the golden eggs. Post-secondary teachers are the ones who train the people who found computer software, biotechnology and other companies key to the twenty-first century economy. They also train society's managers and middle managers. The more high-powered academics you have in your state, the wealthier your state will be.
…
You wonder if educators should let a thing like this be forgotten, or just lie down and let themselves be walked all over by paleontologically-challenged funeral directors.[9]

Funding

• Media Transparency lists grants to the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.

Affiliations

• Center for the Study of Popular Culture
  • Heterodoxy (published by CSPC)
• FrontPageMag.com
• DiscoverTheNetwork
• Encounter Books
• Individual Rights Foundation
• Wednesday Morning Club
• Matt Drudge Defense Fund
• Students for Academic Freedom

External links

• Misinformation and bigotry from David Horowitz (from Media Matters for America)
• Legislating Academic Freedom: The Larkin-Horowitz Debate (continually updated)
• Bibliography of the Writings of David Horowitz, 1951-2003
• Media Transparency report
• Scott Sherman, "David Horowitz's Long March", The Nation, June 15, 2000.
• Steven Ruszczycky, "Make No Gnomes About This Neo-Conservative Dude," Daily Nexus Online, May 30, 2001.
• Alexander Cockburn, A Whiner Called David Horowitz , CounterPunch, May 31, 2003.
• Bill Berkowitz, Horowitz's Campus Jihads: With liberal professors in his crosshairs, David Horowitz is engaging in some good old-fashioned campus cleansing", DissidentVoice, October 9-10, 2004.
• Billmon poster, March 21, 2005. Horowitz could only be flattered knowing that at least one person is paying attention to him! There are some other posters about Horow in this site.
• Juan Cole, "Florida Funeral Director Buries Universities", Informed Comment, March 29, 2005.
• Juan Cole, "Dutchess Community College Stands up for Academic Freedom", Informed Comment, March 29, 2005.
• Paul de Rooij, "Undermining Civil Society: David Horowitz's Corrosive Projects", CounterPunch, April 11, 2005. Contains an analysis of the key Horowitz projects.
• MediaTransparancy, "David Horowitz", MediaTransparancy, (regularly updated).
• Bill Berkowitz, "Immigration politics draws attention of David Horowitz , MediaTransparency, August 19, 2005.
• June Kronholz, "Congress Wades Into Campus Politics: Republicans Push for Academic Bill of Rights To Ensure 'Dissenting Viewpoints' in Class," Wall Street Journal (sub. req'd.), October 4, 2005.
• Bill Berkowitz, "Foaming campus cleanser sputters at Temple: David Horowitz attacks liberal academics with so-called Academic Bill of Rights; also looking to rid college campuses of what he calls the anti-war academics who "hate America", Media Transparency, January 15, 2006.
• Nicholas Lemann, "On Balance", Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2006.
• Robert W. McChesney, David Horowitz and the Attack on Independent Thought, CommonDreams, Feb 28, 2006.