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David Horowitz: Response to criticism by Mark LeVine

Mark LeVine's rambling one-sided and deceptive account of our radio debate is yet another lame attempt to discredit my work without paying the slightest attention to what I have actually written. LeVine's book (the one I didn't read) was published in August 2005 after I submitted my manuscript. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Here is the first paragraph from the LeVine profile:

"Mark LeVine is a radical activist and guitar-playing Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His academic website explains: 'My scholarship, activism and music are all tied to my commitment to struggles for social justice in the United States and around the world.' He is an advisory board member to Occupation Watch, an organization set up by radicals to incite American soldiers in Iraq to request 'conscientious objector' status and leave their posts. Professor LeVine is an academic known for his steady stream of anti-American and anti-Israel diatribes that depict Washington and Jerusalem as aggressors in a war against Islam."

In other words, by his own account LeVine is an activist whose scholarship is subordinated to his political agendas. That is the reason he is in my book, and unless he wants to repudiate his own declaration I see no reason to revise anything I said about him in my text.

LeVine's comments on Cornel West reflect his unscholarly approach to intellectual discussions. Has Cornel West produced scholarly papers in the last decade or more that have appeared in peer-reviewed journals? LeVine says he has but offers not one citation to prove it. Why would Larry Summers ask West to devote himself to producing a scholarly work if his resume was not deficient? Why does LeVine think he can dismiss what I have written without referring to the actual text?

I hope the next professor to step up to the plate with an attack on my book will do his homework first.