CLIOPATRIA: A Group Blog

Ralph E. Luker

More "Urban Legend" ...

Yesterday, David Horowitz demanded retractions of reports around the blogosphere that he'd been promoting an "urban legend" when he told the story of a student who complained of being required to write an essay about President Bush as a "war criminal." Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy were sufficiently convinced by Horowitz's reports that they retracted. Sensing that there was more to the story than he was telling, I refused to retract anything.

Technically, the story isn't an "urban legend" because some of the details can be nailed down. They are pretty embarrassing to Horowitz's version of things:
1) The oppressive leftist professor turns out to be a Republican;
2) The University has a copy of the original examination and the question wasn't about President Bush as a "war criminal";
3) The student wasn't obliged to answer the question that got twisted into that version by Horowitz;
4) The student's answer to the question didn't fulfill the test's instructions about the length of the essay;
5) The student did not receive an F, etc. Scott Jaschik's "Tattered Poster Child" at Inside Higher Ed has more. As Rick Perlstein says in comments over there: "Why should David Horowitz verify a claim before he begins using it to sabotage institutions? In fact, he should just throw a professor in the river, and if she floats, well, then, she must be a witch."


Posted on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 11:20 AM 

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