Barbara McKenna: Beware the new thought police
... Recently, the Horowitz campaign to restrict faculty speech took an even more negative turn with the publication of The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery Publishing Inc., 2006). The promotional blurb reads:
“Coming to a Campus Near You: Terrorists, racists, and communists—you know them as The Professors.
“Horowitz exposes 101 academics—representative of thousands of radicals who teach our young people—who also happen to be alleged ex-terrorists, racists, murderers, sexual deviants, anti-Semites, and al-Qaida supporters. Horowitz blows the cover on academics who: — Say they want to kill white people. — Promote the views of the Iranian mullahs. — Support Osama bin Laden. — Lament the demise of the Soviet Union. — Defend pedophilia. — Advocate the killing of ordinary Americans.”
The book is a compilation of three- to five-page profiles of professors, many of which have been recycled verbatim from Web postings made in the last year or so. The top disciplines represented are ethnic studies, women’s studies and Islamic studies, but history, economics, English and political science are well-represented, too. The portraits seem to be based on published writings by the subjects, unproven accusations about them, portions of statements taken out of context and information drawn from Google searches. Frequently, the depictions summarize the academics’ well-established scholarly bona fides in ethnic studies or women’s studies or peace studies, for example, as self-evident proof that the scholars are out of control in their classrooms. Very few profiles mention anything that actually goes on in a classroom.
Horowitz describes his research method as prosopography, which relies upon genealogical or biographical data to draw conclusions about an entire cohort or class.
It is a technique also known as collective biography, explains Temple’s Cutler, a historian. It is commonly used by historians delving into ancient periods where there is a dearth of data. “His use of it really is an attempt to misuse it. He is trying to generalize to a population that is in the hundreds of thousands from a sample of a hundred and one.” Using this approach, Horowitz claims that these 101 are “only the tip of the iceberg.” By his mathematical accounting, he says, “assuming a figure of 10 percent per university faculty, the total number of such professors at American universities with views similar to the spectrum represented in this volume would be in the neighborhood of 25,000 to 30,000.”
In The Professors, Horowitz attacks professors for having communist relatives and finds Marxists under every bush. (Horowitz himself is the son of communist parents and was a member of the party until his politics turned reactionary.) He condemns Eric Foner, for example, the distinguished Columbia University history professor, for quoting African-American actor and Cold War-era communist Paul Robeson saying, “The patriot is the person who is never satisfied with his country.” He charges that sociology professor Michael Schwartz of SUNY Stony Brook is an obsessed Marxist whose views have permeated the department because it offers a course called “Stratification.” The course “purports to investigate the ‘causes and consequences of the unequal distribution of wealth, power, prestige and other social values in different societies’,” the copy reads.
“I never even teach that class,” says Schwartz, “but can you find anyone in the U.S. who doesn’t think that society is stratified?”
“What is disturbing is the use of ‘most dangerous’,” says AFT vice president Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress representing faculty at the City University of New York, home to six faculty on the list of 101. “It’s not an innocent subtitle, especially in this time of tremendous focus on terrorism. These so-called portraits are supposed to be examples of poor researchers, but Horowitz’s own research is poor, shoddy and secondhand.”
One person he goes after is a junior faculty member at the Brooklyn College School of Education named Priya Parmar. Her description is a recycling of an article that appeared May 31, 2005, in the New York Sun, which was based on the unsubstantiated claims of two former students and a Brooklyn College history professor, K.C. Johnson, whom Parmar has never met nor seen. The article claims that Parmar politicized a class she teaches, “Language Literacy in Secondary Education.” It cites the objections of three students who accused her of bigotry toward white students and a bias against standard English because she uses hip-hop as a tool to address literacy.
After the article appeared, 50 of her students signed a letter in her defense. Her colleagues in the school of education have defended Parmar and her pedagogy, and most signed an open letter to K.C. Johnson condemning his public attacks. She has received written support from her dean and her union, the Professional Staff Congress/AFT.
One of her students who wrote the letter, Elisheva Rison, a senior history major, was infuriated over the Parmar smear “because I know for a fact that it wasn’t true.” She says she confronted the campus president of Students for Academic Freedom, the Horowitz offshoot. “I told them that the claims of Parmar being anti-white and refusing to let students express their opinions in class was a complete falsehood, since I and many others have taken her—and among them were white students as well.” The newspaper never followed up with any of the students and never printed Parmar’s response to the inaccuracies. Still, this serves as the basis for Horowitz’s rant.
Parmar expresses anger and frustration over the situation, in which two students with unsubstantiated claims can get so much exposure and not one of the 50 students who signed their names on her behalf have been contacted. But the attempted blacklisting has made her more determined in her classroom, she says. “I have always worked to create a safe place. All my students get a voice. It has always been my mission to address diversity and to hear multiple perspectives. I haven’t compromised my teaching as far as content or even my approach.”
University of Illinois communications professor Robert McChesney, whose students have recognized him for his work, comes under attack by Horowitz for raising questions about the news media, its corporate ownership and what effect that has on news coverage. “Universities are one of the last institutions not entirely under their [conservatives’] thumb. They want to intimidate professors, want to shrink places where people can do independent work.
“I consciously avoid penalizing students for their political views,” he adds. “I’d be surprised if most of my colleagues aren’t the same way.”
“Horowitz’s screed is essentially a series of lies and misrepresentations,” says Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan whose fields are Middle Eastern and South Asian history and religion. “I never have alleged a ‘Jewish’ ‘conspiracy’ ‘controlling’ the U.S. government, and Horowitz could never find any such quote. I have never, for instance, characterized Israel as a fascist state.”
What is more, Cole adds, “The allegation that humanities scholarship is politicized is a bald-faced lie. And the allegation itself is made as a Trojan horse for the purpose of sneaking in a politicization of the humanities!”...
Read entire article at On Campus (March-April 2006)
“Coming to a Campus Near You: Terrorists, racists, and communists—you know them as The Professors.
“Horowitz exposes 101 academics—representative of thousands of radicals who teach our young people—who also happen to be alleged ex-terrorists, racists, murderers, sexual deviants, anti-Semites, and al-Qaida supporters. Horowitz blows the cover on academics who: — Say they want to kill white people. — Promote the views of the Iranian mullahs. — Support Osama bin Laden. — Lament the demise of the Soviet Union. — Defend pedophilia. — Advocate the killing of ordinary Americans.”
The book is a compilation of three- to five-page profiles of professors, many of which have been recycled verbatim from Web postings made in the last year or so. The top disciplines represented are ethnic studies, women’s studies and Islamic studies, but history, economics, English and political science are well-represented, too. The portraits seem to be based on published writings by the subjects, unproven accusations about them, portions of statements taken out of context and information drawn from Google searches. Frequently, the depictions summarize the academics’ well-established scholarly bona fides in ethnic studies or women’s studies or peace studies, for example, as self-evident proof that the scholars are out of control in their classrooms. Very few profiles mention anything that actually goes on in a classroom.
Horowitz describes his research method as prosopography, which relies upon genealogical or biographical data to draw conclusions about an entire cohort or class.
It is a technique also known as collective biography, explains Temple’s Cutler, a historian. It is commonly used by historians delving into ancient periods where there is a dearth of data. “His use of it really is an attempt to misuse it. He is trying to generalize to a population that is in the hundreds of thousands from a sample of a hundred and one.” Using this approach, Horowitz claims that these 101 are “only the tip of the iceberg.” By his mathematical accounting, he says, “assuming a figure of 10 percent per university faculty, the total number of such professors at American universities with views similar to the spectrum represented in this volume would be in the neighborhood of 25,000 to 30,000.”
In The Professors, Horowitz attacks professors for having communist relatives and finds Marxists under every bush. (Horowitz himself is the son of communist parents and was a member of the party until his politics turned reactionary.) He condemns Eric Foner, for example, the distinguished Columbia University history professor, for quoting African-American actor and Cold War-era communist Paul Robeson saying, “The patriot is the person who is never satisfied with his country.” He charges that sociology professor Michael Schwartz of SUNY Stony Brook is an obsessed Marxist whose views have permeated the department because it offers a course called “Stratification.” The course “purports to investigate the ‘causes and consequences of the unequal distribution of wealth, power, prestige and other social values in different societies’,” the copy reads.
“I never even teach that class,” says Schwartz, “but can you find anyone in the U.S. who doesn’t think that society is stratified?”
“What is disturbing is the use of ‘most dangerous’,” says AFT vice president Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress representing faculty at the City University of New York, home to six faculty on the list of 101. “It’s not an innocent subtitle, especially in this time of tremendous focus on terrorism. These so-called portraits are supposed to be examples of poor researchers, but Horowitz’s own research is poor, shoddy and secondhand.”
One person he goes after is a junior faculty member at the Brooklyn College School of Education named Priya Parmar. Her description is a recycling of an article that appeared May 31, 2005, in the New York Sun, which was based on the unsubstantiated claims of two former students and a Brooklyn College history professor, K.C. Johnson, whom Parmar has never met nor seen. The article claims that Parmar politicized a class she teaches, “Language Literacy in Secondary Education.” It cites the objections of three students who accused her of bigotry toward white students and a bias against standard English because she uses hip-hop as a tool to address literacy.
After the article appeared, 50 of her students signed a letter in her defense. Her colleagues in the school of education have defended Parmar and her pedagogy, and most signed an open letter to K.C. Johnson condemning his public attacks. She has received written support from her dean and her union, the Professional Staff Congress/AFT.
One of her students who wrote the letter, Elisheva Rison, a senior history major, was infuriated over the Parmar smear “because I know for a fact that it wasn’t true.” She says she confronted the campus president of Students for Academic Freedom, the Horowitz offshoot. “I told them that the claims of Parmar being anti-white and refusing to let students express their opinions in class was a complete falsehood, since I and many others have taken her—and among them were white students as well.” The newspaper never followed up with any of the students and never printed Parmar’s response to the inaccuracies. Still, this serves as the basis for Horowitz’s rant.
Parmar expresses anger and frustration over the situation, in which two students with unsubstantiated claims can get so much exposure and not one of the 50 students who signed their names on her behalf have been contacted. But the attempted blacklisting has made her more determined in her classroom, she says. “I have always worked to create a safe place. All my students get a voice. It has always been my mission to address diversity and to hear multiple perspectives. I haven’t compromised my teaching as far as content or even my approach.”
University of Illinois communications professor Robert McChesney, whose students have recognized him for his work, comes under attack by Horowitz for raising questions about the news media, its corporate ownership and what effect that has on news coverage. “Universities are one of the last institutions not entirely under their [conservatives’] thumb. They want to intimidate professors, want to shrink places where people can do independent work.
“I consciously avoid penalizing students for their political views,” he adds. “I’d be surprised if most of my colleagues aren’t the same way.”
“Horowitz’s screed is essentially a series of lies and misrepresentations,” says Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan whose fields are Middle Eastern and South Asian history and religion. “I never have alleged a ‘Jewish’ ‘conspiracy’ ‘controlling’ the U.S. government, and Horowitz could never find any such quote. I have never, for instance, characterized Israel as a fascist state.”
What is more, Cole adds, “The allegation that humanities scholarship is politicized is a bald-faced lie. And the allegation itself is made as a Trojan horse for the purpose of sneaking in a politicization of the humanities!”...