Book Review by Daniel Mencher
The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America
by David Horowitz
Regnery Publishing
ISBN 0895260034
Nathaniel Nelson, a Christian, was a student at the University of Rhode Island. One day, he was in class when his professor singled him out to ask, “Nathaniel, why do Christians hate fags?” It is unclear why the professor had such disregard for the student-teacher relationship and the trust necessary to maintain it. It is also unclear how that was relevant to the topic at hand, given that the course title was “Political Philosophy from Plato to Machiavelli.” In his book The Professors, David Horowitz compares that event to his own college experience, when he was a Marxist. “Even though this was the height of the Cold War and my professors were anti-Communist liberals,” writes Horowitz, “they never singled me out for comment the way many conservative students I have encountered are singled out today. No professor of mine ever said in the course of a classroom lecture, ‘Horowitz, why do Communists kill so many people?’”
It has long been an item of national discourse that nearly all American universities are bastions of liberalism. However, most people, including conservatives, underestimate just how skewed to the Left the average university really is. When thinking of a “liberal,” they picture a hippie or a typical Democrat—and for most of the country, this is rather accurate. For most universities, however, that is barely the tip of the iceberg. The average college professor is much further to the Left than the average Democrat. Academia abounds with socialists and Communists, radical environmentalists and feminists, Islamofascist sympathizers and even Islamofascist terrorists. However, the tendency to underestimate the situation continues, making it all the more momentous that David Horowitz, in The Professors, has done such a wonderfully thorough job of documenting and exposing the rampant extremism in the universities.
The Professors contains an introduction entitled “Trials of the Intellect in the Post-Modern Academy,” individual profiles of 101 professors, an essay entitled “Why Administrators Fail to Maintain Academic Standards,” and, finally, a chapter entitled “The Representative Nature of the Professors Profiled in This Volume.” The introduction does a great job of putting the book in context. Horowitz explains what he sets out to prove and provides a few brief examples, including the infamous Ward Churchill. Churchill is the Colorado professor who made headlines when it came to light that he called 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.” Horowitz explores this situation in great detail. (Subsequently, Churchill is not one of the 101 professors profiled in the following section.)
While it may seem that Horowitz bases his argument mainly on the 101 profiles, which constitute the bulk of the book, the real crux of the argument is to be found in the final chapter. The profiles do provide damning evidence of extremism and bias in academia—all based upon information taken from sources carefully cited in 862 endnotes—but the public has already known for some time that many professors are far to the Left. Naming them and detailing their political activities is not meant to prove anything significant, although some of the outrageous things these professors have said and done will certainly take most Americans by surprise. It is in the final chapter that Horowitz, by meticulously examining the structure of the universities, drives the point home: The radical views and beliefs held by these 101 specific professors are not unique to them and a few others; rather, they and their extreme words and deeds are commonplace throughout almost all of academia. Indeed, the 101 professors profiled in the book are an accurately representative sample of most American professors today (hence the title of the chapter).
In the essay “Why Administrators Fail to Maintain Academic Standards,” Horowitz explains how the rampant extremism originally came about in academic faculties, and why it remains there decades later. Notably, Horowitz is sure to explain how such extremism and the people who practice it are indeed greatly lacking academic standards. To aid in his explanation, Horowitz uses some examples, the most notable of which is the infamous scandal at Harvard when president Summers made comments about women and science that offended a number of feminists. “The only real concern of the faculty leftists was to punish Summers for voicing a politically incorrect idea,” says Horowitz. “It is hard to imagine a more anti-intellectual position than the one taken by the feminists and other faculty radicals involved in this incident.”
The Professors is highly recommended to everyone involved with a university, including professors, deans, administrators, and especially students. Although most returning Jumbos are fairly familiar with the extent of the left-leaning bias at Tufts, Horowitz’s masterpiece will certainly put their own experiences here in perspective. Incoming freshmen, however, are most encouraged to pick up a copy. It will prepare such inexperienced students for the types of experiences they can expect to have over the next number of years, and help them to take their professors’ words and actions with an appropriate grain of salt.
Mr. Mencher is a senior majoring in Spanish.
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