The great David Horowitz campaign against evul academics has reached Australia, and has even occasioned a Senate inquiry. It was a load of fun. The report is good reading, as is the minority report by the Liberal (= conservative down under) Party Senators who called the inquiry in the first place, but lost control following their election defeat last year. A snippet suggests that those involved knew how to handle Horowitzism
From the committee’s perspective it appeared as
though it was to be called on to play its part in a university revue. The submissions,
the performance and the style – to say nothing of the rhetoric – presented by some
Liberal Students suggested a strong undergraduate tone. The ‘outing’ of Left and
purportedly Left academics and commentators (masquerading as academics as we
were told at one hearing) was in keeping with this tone. None of those outed objected.
Some appeared flattered to be named in the company of others more famous
The list of leftist academics is, I must admit, a sore point. I never located the full list (the links on the inquiry website were skew-whiff) but clearly I wasn’t on it. What does a leftist have to do to get noticed in this country?
{ 21 comments }
Mrs Tilton 12.05.08 at 12:30 pm
Clearly Horowitz is unaware you share a website with America’s Most Dangerous Professor or you’d have made the list for sure. Those people are big on guilt-by-association.
Zamfir 12.05.08 at 12:46 pm
Bomb something to protest the war.
rea 12.05.08 at 1:20 pm
Zamfir, as far as I’m aware, Prof. Ayers is the only one on the US list who actually bombed anything:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Professors#The_list
Dave 12.05.08 at 1:51 pm
“… a strong undergraduate tone”. Hah! Now shove off and play, you overprivileged entitlement-freaks, the grown-ups are trying to work.
Alex 12.05.08 at 2:37 pm
Is this man’s presence in the Commonwealth of Australia conducive to the public good? I think the responsible minister should make a determination. After all, leaders of authoritarian and extremist movements in the United States have been refused entry into the UK before…
MarkUp 12.05.08 at 3:24 pm
”Is this man’s presence in the Commonwealth of Australia conducive to the public good?”
It is for ours. We can sent a thank you note if you decide to keep him.
David Wright 12.05.08 at 7:00 pm
What does a leftist have to do to get noticed in this country?
It would probably help to be in a department, like minority studies or ecology, where leftism counts as the axiomatic foundation of the discipline. Maybe an economist who taught that the demand curve for labor is not downward-sloping, or that there are no dead-weight losses and no Laffer curve, could get on the list.
ehj2 12.05.08 at 7:33 pm
Just change your name to Clinton.
ehj2 12.05.08 at 7:36 pm
If you want to go even further and be placed on the “no-fly list,” change your name to Kennedy.
Colin Danby 12.05.08 at 7:39 pm
This is a matter of some resentment. Horowitz’s list is heavy on decrepit hippies who haven’t been dangerous for thirty years (I suppose he’s using it to settle scores from his youth). So there are far fewer spots left for those of us who have tried to achieve dangerality more recently.
Alex Kuz 12.05.08 at 10:03 pm
Wasn’t Crooked Timber’s own Michael Berube included in Horowitz’s book, The 100 Most Dangerous Professors in America? I was a student at Penn State shortly after the book was published and attended a Horowitz speech on campus that was quite riveting. Students were livid about the inclusion of Michael and another professor, Sam Richards (I was taking one of Sam’s classes at the time), in the book. Lot’s of screaming back and forth between Horowitz and students with the gall to ask him to explain their presence on the list. If my memory serves me correctly, there was very nearly a fight between a College Republican (the group that sponsored the event) and a young black woman. You could feel Horowitz’s blood pressure rising throughout the entire Q&A — a few times he even shouted something like “Stupid, stupid!! Next Question!” or called questioners idiots. It was a great time! And Michael, if you read this, congrats on being included in that book — I’d consider it an honor.
Alex Kuz 12.05.08 at 10:36 pm
So, someone already pointed out that Michael Berube is on that list. I should have read the other comments more closely I guess.
Robert 12.06.08 at 12:01 pm
I’m afraid David Wright is ignorant of economics.
tgb1000 12.06.08 at 1:31 pm
So liberal = conservative down under, huh? Onaccounta the winter = summer thing?
Dave 12.06.08 at 4:20 pm
@14: it’s no more arse-about-face than the UK conservative party embracing neoliberal economics in the 1980s; or the US wingnuts conflating liberalism and fascism, and using ‘neoconservatism’ as a label for a doctrine of overthrow. By their deeds shall you know them.
David Irving (no relation) 12.07.08 at 1:30 am
tgb1000 – the Liberal name (note the capitalisation) is more a historical accident than anything else. The party’s founder, Robert Menzies, had heard of (and misinterpreted) Adam Smith and J.S. Mill.
They’ve always been anything but liberal, btw – they’re socially conservative, and, at least at the beginning, enthusiastically supported all kinds of protectionist tariffs (although they’ve more recently fallen under the spell of what passes for thought in neo-liberal economists).
Baraholka 12.07.08 at 11:08 pm
Dave @ 4; Colin @10
“undergraduate tone”, “he’s using it to settle scores from his youth”
Howard and Costello tried to destroy the Australian Student University Guilds precisely to settle scores from their youth and to minimize the exposure of University students to any critique of capitalism or to radical politics of any sort.
Since Howard and Costello behaved in such a petty, undergraduate and insidious manner it is unsurprising that their acolytes in the Young Libs have followed their lead.
Helen 12.08.08 at 2:51 am
tgb1000 12.06.08 at 1:31 pm
So liberal = conservative down under, huh? Onaccounta the winter = summer thing?
It’s called “Big L Liberalism / small l liberalism over here. “Big L Liberalism” is the neo/conservatism of the “Liberal” party, and we say “small l liberalism” to refer to liberalism as you understand it in the US. So you have to look for the capitalisation sometimes to understand articles on Australian politics. Confusing, I know.
Hugh 12.08.08 at 12:30 pm
John Vandermeer, estimable biologist from the University of Michigan, was so upset by not being included on the list he wrote a letter to Horowitz demanding an explanation. You could try that, but I don’t think it worked for John.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=5FA6588A-EB6A-4294-BE2C-D3FD54CDFE11
Dear Mr. Horowitz:
A friend forwarded to me your list of the 100 most dangerous professors. I must take issue with your decision on the people at the University of Michigan, where I am a professor of biology. You list Juan Cole and Gayle Rubin as the only two professors here who merit inclusion in your list. While I do agree that Juan and Gayle are certainly dangerous from your point of view, I must argue that I should be included at least on par with them, perhaps even more dangerous. Sometimes there is a tendency for people like you to ignore professors in the Natural Sciences as potentially subversive. This is a mistake in general, and especially a mistake in my case. Let me summarize my subversive activities.
sharon 12.08.08 at 12:37 pm
So you have to look for the capitalisation sometimes to understand articles on Australian politics. Confusing, I know.
And the difference between republican and Republican isn’t confusing?
Helen 12.09.08 at 12:33 am
True – I hadn’t thought of that!
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