What Horowitz and Churchill Should Agree On

And however well-intentioned Horowitz' "Academic Bill of Rights" may be, it would be moot were colleges and universities (and primary and secondary schools, for that matter) forced to survive on their own merits rather than through tax dollars.



An excellent point, except that that will never happen, and that renders your point moot.

  — rightwingprof () (URL) - 22 March '06 - 11:17

According to Paine, the university is "an irresistible target for procrustean regulation" for Horowitz.



Please explain how getting the establishment-left to simply be more inclusive, according to their own ideals, supercilliously regulatory?



I siomply can't fathom that objection.

  — Orson () - 22 March '06 - 11:26

rightwingprof:



You may be right, but it has a better chance of happening than the US off the planet Churchill advocates, or the nationwide retaliatory over-regulation Horowitz promotes.

  — Jim Paine () - 22 March '06 - 11:28

Orson:



As I noted above, Horowitz' ABOR is retaliatory in nature, with rule number 4 the most troublesome:



"Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints. Academic disciplines should welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions."



"Unsettled" for whom? This restriction alone makes the ABOR procrustean. That it gives the Right a powerful weapon in the admittedly Leftist-controlled academic arena only serves to exacerbate the problem of ensuring academic freedom, which actually entails freeing academia from the control of the Left, the Right, and the Government.

  — Jim Paine () - 22 March '06 - 11:40

Jim Paine has caused me to change my mind about David Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights. Allowing the government to determine the right philisophical balance in Academia is just asking for trouble. Less government money for higher education is the answer. It will mean more accountability - forcing fraud artists like Ward Churchill to peddle their nonsense to the converted without sucking on the taxpayers teat.



Whether this will ever happen, however, is doubtful.

  — Lary Lloyd () - 22 March '06 - 12:32

Thanks for taking the opposing view. Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights is just as bad as the "more gun laws" the GFWs cry for.



Most schools have rules addressing Horowitz's complaints that, like the gun laws already on the books, just aren't being enforced.

  — Lornkanaga () (URL) - 22 March '06 - 13:33

The debaters seem to be in the, "minor league" catagory. I rank Horowitz in the same league as Michael Savage. Entertaining, at times addressing the truth, but find myself needing to verify anything they state.



Anyway, it's a start. Perhaps you can dig up an essay by Alston Chase. He noted that the primary purpose of American Public Education is conformity. And it has been since its inception.



I think the time has come to, "diversify" American education.

  — DWG () - 22 March '06 - 17:58

It's not really clear where you're coming from. The Berkeley I prefer to remember, that is prior to the so-called "Free Speech Movement" of 1963 that claimed Bettina Aptheker (daughter of the notorious antisemitic Communist Party theoretician Herbert Aptheker) a major leader, professors, TAs and students could actually engage in meaningful dialogs from opposite political viewpoints without fear of reprisal. That is not the case now! Moderate and conservative students cannot engage their professors in the same way I could in the early 1960s. Worse than that, campus anti-semitism is at a all time high! I am in sufficient contact with the University of California to tell you that I'm not about to back off that position one iota. David Horowitz may have his faults, but his academic "bad guys" are far and away worse than he ever thought of being.

  — Mescalero () - 22 March '06 - 22:07

I have to agree with Mescalero. What ever Horowitzs faults, his efforts shine the light of truth into the darkness of academic indoctrination which is increasingly taking place in our universities and other educational institutions. Granted that Paines idea of getting government out of the education business has merit, that by itself will not guarantee that student indoctrination of a teachers political views will stop. Teachers and professors use the shadowy cloak of academic isolation to hid their proselyzing. Perhaps Horowitzs greatest gift to society is making these rather covert activities public.

  — docdave () - 23 March '06 - 11:36

How about the "baby step" of requiring course relevant discourse and education.

No reason for politics at all in most courses.

  — J'hn1 () (URL) - 24 March '06 - 01:58

"How about the “baby step” of requiring course relevant discourse and education.

No reason for politics at all in most courses."





This is not true, though it should be. Since Churchill and types like him lack the education and intelligence to carry out course-relevant education, rote political ranting in the classroom is all they have left. That's why they have replaced essential education with mere political indoctrination: The instructors themselves are incapable of anything more intellectually demanding than that. Seriously. Talk to these people sometime. They themselves never got an education.

  — Federal Dog - 25 March '06 - 15:06

Fed Dog:



Whaddaya mean no education? Ward got his bachelors and masters degrees from Sangaman State University, man



That's Sangaman, daddy-o.

  — jgm () (URL) - 27 March '06 - 22:23

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