7 Comments

1. elaina:

   That was fun and satisfying.

   Can we forward this???

   25 December 2005, 6:10 pm

2. Stan:

   Absolutely.

   25 December 2005, 8:22 pm

3. victoria:

   As we know, most people in the US don’t want to think
   very hard or look very far for answers – why they
   swallowed Bush’s lies for war, etc. Imagine how
   pleased right wingers will be when they find Horowitz’
   list – all those terrible liberals all together for
   easy reference! If Horowitz says something about any
   of these people, it must be true. I wonder how the
   dead people are active beyond the grave, people like
   Ossie Davis and Susan Sontag, just a couple I noticed
   quickly, not to mention Patty Hearst as a terrorist!
   As far as I know, she is a suburban mom now.

   As Lila R. wrote in her article, it is so easy to
   smear people and if often enough, it becomes true.
   Under anti-patriot act, he should list the entire
   population of Maine and the four other states who have
   rejected it. And then he lists NGOs as a
   category?!!??!! What about IRI, NED and all the
   totally ultra-right wing NGOs trying to, and with no
   little success, overturn democracies? Of course I
   would like to laugh it off but, when you couple this
   sort of hate mongering with what Bush has been doing
   with spying on anyone he wants, then I think it is
   serious. The NSA/FBI have been spying on people I
   know, for no good reason. With a list like this,
   packed with erroneous slander, it will be even easier
   for innocent people to be harrassed and or jailed.

   The fantasy is that we in the US live in a transparent
   democracy, that our officials and media are not
   corrupt stooges for the facsists in power. The right
   is always whining about the liberal New York Times,
   well the Times sat on the wire tapping story for a
   year because the administration asked them to in the
   interests of ‘national security’, not to mention the
   garbage they let Judith Miller print. There is NO
   liberal media, except Amy Goodman and she hardly has
   the audience of CNN.

   While I try not to attract unnecessary attention to
   myself, I also do what I believe in – anti-war
   protests, vigils, responding to misleading articles in
   papers, etc., so that my name is slowly showing up in
   certain contexts, though I am not ashamed of that.
   However, I do not really want to attract the attention
   of someone like Horowitz, as much as I would like to
   tell him where to stuff his lists of misinformation.
   With the recent CIA info and this, a nice way to end the
   year!

   28 December 2005, 1:37 pm

4. dave-leon czolgosz:

   I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I do laugh, from deep down in my belly, at Horrowitz’s efforts to defame, slander and illegitamize Leftists or any organization without capital/imperial interests. Horrowitz seems to appeal only to the same class of political zealots that were snared by Rush Limbaugh when he was at his peak – deposed, bitter Americans who have nothing better to do then rally behind the banner of faux-patriotic anti-intellectualism. Horrowitz’s ham-fisted swipes at classic thinkers like Chomsky and Zinn shows nothing more than that he is intimidated and not on the intellectual level of the people he demonizes. He doesn’t seem to know the difference between liberals and “leftists” and is too eager to blame socialists, communists, union organizers or any non-capitalist political groups as “anti-American”.

   Horowitz shares the same ahistoric, tunnel vision viewpoint that has unfortunately become the manifesto of square jawed conservatives everywhere – that there is only one America and that it will never change. They are too close minded to understand that it is always changing and that is it’s foundation. Hateful and harmful as the words of Horowitz may be, they don’t carry enough weight to do anything but embolden some biggoted viewpoints in bar conversations. They do not have the power to bring down MacCarthy-esque witch hunts and they aren’t slick enough to entice the real dangerous conservatives – the young and rich who don’t read history or care about the future. Horowitz is doing nothing for America. He is channeling his own fear, hatred and need to criticize and condemn by way of blaming thought provocation for everything he sees wrong with the world. Until Texas actually becomes the new Weimar Republic, I’m going to consider him the blowhard he is and concentrate on the real killers.

   And no matter how hard he whines, the tides will turn away from popular conservatism as they have time and time again. He will drown while the rest of us surf forward.

   29 December 2005, 6:24 pm

5. James M:

   Interesting and humorous to note, Stan, that your “bio” mentioned nothing of your military career (except an oblique acknowledgment of you as a “soldier” in the context of quoting “Hideous Dream”). Whoever put that together must have understood, wisely, that noting your former membership in Special Forces would have detracted from the attempted smear-job.

   BTW, thanks for “Full Spectrum Disorder” and all your writings … I recently discovered your work and my thinking has been permanently realigned.

   2 January 2006, 11:54 pm

6. Charles Brown:

   From the issue dated February 10, 2006
   POINT OF VIEW
   Worse Than McCarthy

   By ELLEN SCHRECKER

   When Barrows Dunham, chairman of Temple University’s philosophy department,
   faced the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953, he knew that his
   job was on the line. He was determined not to cooperate with the committee
   or name names; so, after giving his name, address, and — reluctantly — his
   date and place of birth, he invoked the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against
   self-incrimination. He was more forthcoming with Temple’s investigation,
   explaining to a special faculty-administration committee why he had joined
   the Communist Party and why he left it. Even so, the university dismissed
   him on the grounds that he had abused the Fifth Amendment and so was unfit
   to teach.

   Unlike Dunham, the Temple professors who appeared in January before the
   Select Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives were not
   risking their jobs. The panel’s inquiry, the fruit of David Horowitz’s
   current campaign to enact an “academic bill of rights,” sought to find out
   whether students were facing political and religious discrimination within
   the commonwealth’s classrooms. Though the testimony the committee received
   was decidedly mixed, at no point were any professors quizzed, as Dunham
   was, about their politics.

   full: http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i23/23b02001.htm

   10 February 2006, 10:08 am

7. Charles Brown:

   From: John Vandermeer [mailto:jvander at umich.edu]
   Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 10:45 AM
   To: bshipp at nc.rr.com
   Subject: Appearance Inquiry

   Dear Mr. Horowitz:

   A friend forwarded to me your list of the 100 most dangerous professors. I
   must take issue with your decision on the people at the University of
   Michigan, where I am a professor of biology. You list Juan Cole and Gayle
   Rubin as the only two professors here who merit inclusion in your
   list. While I do agree that Juan and Gayle are certainly dangerous from
   your point of view, I must argue that I should be included at least on par
   with them, perhaps even more dangerous. Sometimes there is a tendency for
   people like you to ignore professors in the Natural Sciences as potentially
   subversive. This is a mistake in general, and especially a mistake in my
   case. Let me summarize my subversive activities.

   I regularly teach a course entitled “biology and human affairs,” and have
   been teaching this course for almost 30 years. It is a course that treats
   not only biology but the effects that various subjects in biology have on
   the human condition. Thus I present material related to genetics and race,
   the biology of race and gender and how that is relevant to affirmative
   action, questions of global warming and the Bush administration’s foolish
   attempt to confuse the issue in the public’s mind, questions of global
   hunger and European imperialism (including U.S. imperialism). In short, I
   cover all the material that would be undoubtedly offensive to the right
   wing of the country. Indeed, it has been rumored in the past that the
   course is informally known as “commie bio” amongst the general student
   body. How could that not be considered dangerous from your point of
   view. Every year I present this material to about 200 students. Why does
   this not qualify me for your list?

   During the Reagan years, when the CIA was engaged in its illegal war
   against Nicaragua, I went to Nicaragua and taught agronomy students
   biology, attempting to help the struggling Sandinista government, and I
   have been vociferous in defense of Cuba’s right to exist and its impressive
   agricultural system, which I have seen first hand on several visits to that
   country. I also give talks around town about the Cuban agricultural system
   and its vibrant democracy, which I contrast with the moribund democratic
   system (at least that of which remains) of the United States.

   I do hope you will reconsider and add my name to your list. I do realize
   that you have a big problem by restricting yourself to the 100 most
   dangerous professors when there are thousands of us all over the university
   system. But upon reflection I hope you will see that my record does indeed
   qualify me as dangerous. You may think that I am just an egomaniac, but I
   honestly think that I am more dangerous than either Juan or Gayle, and
   certainly more dangerous than Paul Ehrlich from Stanford.

   Thank you for consideration of my request.

   Sincerely yours,

   John Vandermeer
   Margaret Davis Collegiate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

   –

   http://www.marxmail.org

   16 February 2006, 5:21 pm

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