David Horowitz

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For other persons named David Horowitz, see David Horowitz (disambiguation).

David Joel Horowitz (born January 10, 1939) is an American conservative writer and activist. A prominent supporter of Marxism and a member of the New Left in the 1960s, Horowitz later rejected Leftism and now identifies with the right wing of the political spectrum. He is a founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture), a writer for the conservative magazine NewsMax, and the editor of the popular conservative website FrontPageMag.com. He founded the activist group Students for Academic Freedom and is affiliated with Campus Watch, and frequently appears on the Fox News Channel as an analyst.

1 Early life and career
2 Activism on the right
3 Academic Bill of Rights
4 Criticism
- 4.1 Allegations of bigotry
- 4.2 Criticisms questioning Horowitz's 'liberal bias on campuses' evidence
  - 4.2.1 Response to criticism
5 Books
- 5.1 Histories co-authored with Peter Collier
6 Quotations
7 External links
- 7.1 Public Criticism

[edit] Early life and career

David Horowitz was born in 1939 to a Jewish family in Forest Hills, New York. His parents, Phil and Blanche Horowitz, were school-teachers in Sunnyside Gardens, in the borough of Queens in New York City. Horowitz attended Columbia University and later the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a Master's degree in English literature.

His parents were long-standing members of the Communist Party, which Horowitz would come to reject. While still identifying as a Marxist, Horowitz, along with many other left wing figures of his generation, embraced the "New Left", intending to create a socialist movement unstained by ties to the repressive Soviet Union. Horowitz was employed during the 1960s as a political aide to Bertrand Russell.[1]. At the same time, Horowitz was an close friend and associate of the Marxist historian, Isaac Deutscher. Horowitz wrote a biography of Deutscher in 1971.

After returning to the U.S. in 1968, he authored several books that were influential in New Left critiques of American society and particularly its foreign policy, including The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War. Horowitz was an editor at the influential New Left magazine, Ramparts.

Horowitz was a confidant of Black Panthers leader Huey P. Newton, and provided legal and financial assistance to the black revolutionary organization. He would later cite experiences with his involvement in the Panthers as the primary catalyst for reassessing his beliefs. In December of 1974, his close friend Betty Van Patter, a bookkeeper for the Panthers, was murdered. While the case officially went unsolved, Horowitz has maintained that the Panthers were responsible for her murder, committed in order to silence Patter from revealing the organization's financial corruption, and thereafter covered up the killing.

In 1988 Horowitz authored the introduction to a book entitled Convert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies, featuring material taken from John Train. In this introduction, Horowitz describes his own transformation from a leftist to a rightist.

His political and ideological doubts were later recounted in a series of memoirs and retrospectives, including Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, published in 1998. Other events that Horowitz cites as being influential in his conversion from socialism were the impacts of the US loss in the Vietnam War on the peoples of Indochina, and particularly Cambodia, which under the leadership of the Khmer Rouge saw mass terror and famine, leading to millions of deaths. Horowitz believes that the far left turned a blind eye to such atrocities because the ideological vision of the communists was one which they shared and that they think to admit something went wrong was therefore to admit that there was something wrong in the ideal itself; the reactions thus ranged from quiet disinterest in the fate of the countries to stark apologia, symbolized by George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter's Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, which presented a much more favorable depiction of life under the Khmer Rouge than later came to be accepted.

Horowitz belonged to the more introspective class of leftists, but later became much more vocal in opposing communist movements, voicing support for the Contra guerrilla uprising against the Nicaraguan government led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front in the 1980s. Horowitz came to believe that the widespread resistance to the notion that any such uprising against governments viewed as undemocratic and tyrannical could be legitimate or popular, so long as the governments were of the left, Horowitz began to contemplate a complete abandonment of his deeply-held views, to which he ascribes a fundamental level of religiosity. Along with close associate Peter Collier (political author), Horowitz hosted a 1987 "Second Thoughts Conference" in Washington, D.C., which was decried by left-wing figures such as Sidney Blumenthal, who wrote a piece in The Washington Post describing it as a "coming out" of left-wing radicals to the right. Horowitz denied having such an intention at the time. [2]

[edit] Activism on the right

Growing out of their increasing "second thoughts," Horowitz and Collier committed to a completely different cause: opposition to the new status quo of academia and what they perceived to be the destructive influence of it and the new generation of academics. Peter Collier wrote that, "there was only one antidote for the new orthodoxy: Heterodoxy." [3] Thus in 1992, the same year as the election of President Bill Clinton, Heterodoxy magazine was founded.

Since that time, Horowitz has involved himself in an increasing number of organizations and movements intended to counter left-wing political and intellectual influence, and to redress various grievances with academia.

He was later noted for his staunch opposition to affirmative action policies, as well as reparations for slavery. [4] Horowitz is also known for his support for a proactive, interventionist foreign policy associated with the "neoconservatives", a label that Horowitz rejects as a smear. FrontPageMag.com, his right-leaning website, carries editorials from many authors who were and are strongly supportive of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. However, Horowitz personally opposed American intervention in the Kosovo War, arguing that it was unnecessary and harmful to US interests. [5]

Viewing the political atmosphere of many universities as intolerant of such ideas, he went so far as to purchase, or attempt to purchase, advertising space in school publications in order to get his views and arguments across. Many of these offers were denied, and at some schools whose papers carried the essay, copies were destroyed and confiscated by protesting campus groups. [6] [7] [8]

In 2004, Horowitz launched Discover the Networks, a conservative watchdog project that monitors funding for, and various ties among, individuals and organizations of the left. Part of the motivation for Discover the Networks is Horowitz's view that leftist individuals and groups support, whether consciously or not, Islamic terrorism, and thus require ongoing scrutiny. This theme is explored in Horowitz's 2004 book, Unholy Alliance.

An agnostic Jew, Horowitz has rejected the tendency of social conservatives to support sodomy laws, and attacked laws that were still existing on the books. He criticized the Republican Party for being unwilling to gear itself towards the civil rights of homosexuals, noting that more homosexuals voted for George W. Bush in 2000 than did blacks or Jews. While Horowitz disagrees with the gay marriage movement, he believes homosexuals have a fundamental right to privacy and that the term "homosexual agenda", common among right-wing pundits, is an "intolerant" one. [9]

[edit] Academic Bill of Rights

Horowitz at a book event.

The issue of ideological bias in academia is currently Horowitz's main focus of activism and authorship. His 2006 book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, criticizes individual professors for their professorial conduct. According to Horowitz, these professors are responsible for indoctrination in institutions of higher learning.

Horowitz and others promote his Academic Bill of Rights, an eight-point manifesto that seeks to eliminate what they see as political bias in university hiring and grading. Horowitz claims that bias in universities amounts to indoctrination, and charges that conservatives and particularly Republicans are "systematically excluded" from faculties, citing statistical studies on faculty party affiliation. [10] Critics of the proposed policy, such as Stanley Fish, have argued that "academic diversity," as Horowitz describes it, is not a legitimate academic value, and that no endorsement of "diversity" can be absolute. [11]

[edit] Criticism

[edit] Allegations of bigotry

Chip Berlet, writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), identified Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture as one of 17 "right-wing foundations and think tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable." [12] Berlet's piece quoted Horowitz as "blamed slavery on ‘black Africans … abetted by dark-skinned Arabs.'" In his open letter to Morris Dees, president of the SPLC, Horowitz first asserted that he was only referring to the fact the slavery exists in Arab and "black African" countries today, but then agrees with Berlet that he (Horowitz) intended to "to remind people that the slaves transported to America were bought from African and Arab slavers" but adds that his "intention [was] not to blame Africans and Arabs for sole responsibility for slavery" In his letter Horowitz also claimed the charge "cannot be even charitably regarded as a misunderstanding of my text. It is again a calculated and carefully constructed lie." Horowitz does not deny saying, as Berlet quoted him, that "minority ‘demands for special treatment’ [are] ‘only necessary because some blacks can’t seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others,’ but states the passage "has absolutely nothing to do with whether there is lingering racism or not. It doesn’t even have to do with my own opinions, but with the opinions of these other minority groups." Indeed, Horowitz's phrase was "won't it be [viewed by other minorities] that.." however his wording is strongly suggestive of agreeing that such views would be reasonable ways of looking at certain black demands for justice. The letter urges Dees to remove the article from the law center's website, alleging that it was "so tendentious, so filled with transparent misrepresentations and smears that if you continue to post the report you will create for your Southern Poverty Law Center a well-earned reputation as a hate group itself." [13] Dees refused, and subsequent critical pieces on Berlet and the SPLC have been featured on his website and personal blog.

Horowitz was criticized by self-described "anti-racist essayist, lecturer and activist" Tim Wise, who wrote in the left-wing publication, Znet, that Horowitz was acquiescing to racists for his acceptance of funding from the Bradley Foundation, which supported the publication of The Bell Curve, as well for running a modified piece by white nationalist Jared Taylor on the media treatment of black-on-white murders. [14] When Horowitz ran the piece, he admitted that the decision to do so would be controversial, but denied that Taylor was a racist, instead arguing that his "racialism" was an example of identity politics precipitated by an intellectual surrender to multiculturalism; Horowitz denied that he and his publication share the agendas of Taylor. [15]

[edit] Criticisms questioning Horowitz's 'liberal bias on campuses' evidence

The facts of some stories Horowitz has used to support his view that U.S. colleges and universities are bastions of liberal radicalism have been disputed. For example, throughout 2004 Horowitz told the story of a Colorado student who received a failing grade on a final exam by a liberal professor for refusing to write an essay exam response arguing that George W. Bush is a war criminal.[16][17] Whether the story is true is unclear. A spokeswoman for the university said it was false but Horowitz and his supporters stuck to their initial story. [18]. Horowitz also claimed that the student appealed her grade and was later given a "B" on the exam.[19]

Horowitz also claimed that a Pennsylvania State University biology professor forced his students to watch the film Fahrenheit 9/11 just before the 2004 election (see, for example, the Students for Academic Freedom report "The Campaign for Academic Freedom," p. 38).[20] Horowitz later acknowledged that he had no evidence that this event actually took place.[21] Finally, Horowitz has referred to the case of a student named Ahmad al-Qloushi, who was supposedly given a failing grade and told by his instructor to seek psychological counselling after writing an essay which was too "pro-American."[22][23] Al-Qloushi was even given column space on Horowitz's website FrontPageMag.com.[24] The facts underlying this story are disputed. [25][26]

Horowitz has also come under fire for material in his books, particularly The Professors. [27][28]. For example, Media Matters for America analyzed this book and claims that of the 100 professors listed, only six were denigrated by Horowitz solely on the basis of in-class behavior and activities, while 52 were denigrated without any reference whatsoever to in-class activities[29]--in spite of Horowitz's previous claim that he makes "a very clear distinction between what's done in the classroom" and "what professors say as citizens."[30] The group Free Exchange on Campus issued a 50-page report in May of 2006 in which they take issue with many of Horowitz's assertions in the book and describe what they see as factual errors, unsubstantiated assertions, and quotations which appear to be either misquoted or taken out of context.[31][32][33]

[edit] Response to criticism

Jacob Laksin has since issued a lengthy, three-part response to this report on FrontPageMag.com.[34][35][36][37] which, among other things, claims that Free Exchange on Campus misrepresents itself as being "disinterested observers". According to Laskin, "The groups comprising the Free Exchange coalition are chiefly distinguished by their partisan commitment to left-wing political causes and their support for the politicized and one-sided academic status quo." Laskin cites member organizations, Campus Progress (which Laskin claims is funded by George Soros), the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way as examples. Laskin also claims the report "misrepresents and distorts the arguments of The Professors in order to attack the book and its author, and is not above fabricating evidence to make its case," and that while the report does catch some errors in Horowitz's book, they are trivial and "in no way affect the substantive arguments of the book or the conclusions drawn in the individual profiles of the professors included." [38]

[edit] Books

Student: The Political Activities of the Berkeley Students (1962)
Empire and Revolution: A Radical Interpretation of Contemporary History (1970 ISBN 0-394-70856-3)
Corporations and the Cold War, edited, and with introduction (1970 ISBN 0-85345-160-5)
The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War (1971 ISBN 0-8090-0107-1)
Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the '60s by Peter Collier, David Horowitz (1989 ISBN 0-671-66752-1)
The Art of Political War And Other Radical Pursuits
How to Beat the Democrats and Other Subversive Ideas
Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey (1998 ISBN 0-684-84005-7) autobiography
Uncivil Wars: The Controversy Over Reparations For Slavery (2002 ISBN 1-893554-44-9)
Hating Whitey: and Other Progressive Causes ISBN 1-890626-21-X
The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America’s Future
Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (2003 ISBN 1-890626-51-1)
Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (2004 ISBN 0-89526-076-X)
The Anti-Chomsky Reader with Peter Collier (2004 ISBN 1-893554-97-X)
The End Of Time (2005 ISBN 1-59403-080-4)
The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (2006 ISBN 0-89526-003-4)

[edit] Histories co-authored with Peter Collier

The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (1976)
The Kennedys: An American Drama (1985)
The Fords: An American Epic (1987)
The Roosevelts: An American Saga (1994)

[edit] Quotations

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

David Horowitz

Liberation is no longer, and can be no longer, merely a national concern. The dimension of the struggle, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks so clearly saw, is international: its road is the socialist revolution. - from the 1969 essay "Imperialism and Revolution".

For the sake of the poorest peasants in this godforsaken country, I can't wait for the Contras to march into this town and liberate it from these fucking Sandinistas! - In the dining room of the Managua Intercontinental Hotel in Nicaragua, during the fall of 1987.

If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus? - from the 1999 Salon.com article, "Guns don't kill black people, other blacks do".

The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago? - From "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks and Racist Too".