I'm not a big David Horowitz fan, but this piece makes a fair degree of sense--except the part about firing Churchill if he turns out not to be an American Indian. Definitions of who is and who isn't an Indian are too loose for that.
By David Horowitz
February 8, 2005
Editor's note: In an interview that appeared in Saturday's Rocky Mountain News, University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill said "It's been announced in pretty clear terms by both David Horowitz and Newt Gingrich that I am just the kickoff for a general purge they have in mind." In the following column, Horowitz, who is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles, explains what his actual position is in the debate over whether Churchill should be fired for his inflammatory statements. It will probably come as a surprise to many people, both friend and foe alike, that I am opposed to any attempt to fire Ward Churchill for the essay (now part of a book) that has become notorious in which he denounces his own country as a genocidal empire, supports America's terrorist enemies, and says that 9/11 was a case of the "chickens coming home to roost."
Full article
I am curious why you find Horowitz objectionable. So he is more the right than most. So what? Churchill is more to the left than most. And Churchill does, for better and or worse, get to put his views forward at taxpayer expense.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the blog, great stuff! :)
Jaron
Horowitz distrusts professors and wants to protect undergrads from profs with political viewpoints. In my judgment there's no getting away from having a viewpoint and the process is self-regulating: go too far in espousing a political viewpoint and students just switch off. Horowitz, though, has suggested legislation on the subject which, although perhaps well-intentioned, would either a) be unenforceable and therefore a waste of time; or b) exert a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas.
ReplyDeleteHorowitz was a 60s radical who "saw the light" in the 1980s and evidently thinks the tender intellects of undergrads must be protected from ideas he has come to reject. He made the intellectual journey to conservatism on his own, but he doesn't think people like you can be trusted to make up your own minds. That's my beef with him.